Category: Articles

• March 11, 2019

  Brexit blues

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2019.] My wife and I are just a few weeks away from being what amounts to illegals in a country (in fact, an entire continent) where we have lived for the last 4,600 days. Both of us having a British parent has meant that we’ve been…
• February 15, 2019

  Bread

   [This piece was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2019.] I have never met a baker that I didn’t like. Some have even become friends. That’s not surprising considering what they do: getting up early every morning in the sackcloth black of heavy dark and plunging their hands again and again into pliable dough. Have you…
• January 19, 2019

  Elizabeth Costello (by JM Coetzee)

    (This article was first published under the title "The author’s mouthpiece" in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2019.)     Elizabeth Costello is that very rare thing: a commercially successful writer of fiction from Australia – the far end of the world that has typically given very little attention (or much else) to people who…
• November 11, 2018

  The giving game

    [Mick Jagger. Photo: EFE]   [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2018.]   One day near the start of autumn I was watching that uniquely ex-British empire sport of cricket on TV. England were playing India somewhere in the UK and the equally unique face of Rolling Stones front-man Mick…
• October 12, 2018

  A few sparks

  [This article was first published in the October edition of Catalonia Today magazine.]   Ambling through the modern centre of Sant Joan Despí [near Barcelona] recently, I came across a kind of historical relic barely seen in this era of celebrity websites, corporate sponsored blogs and fake news. Lying disregarded on an outdoor cafe table was a…
• September 30, 2018

  Worshipping the gods of commerce

    [A version of this article was first published in Kansai Scene magazine and was co-written with Anil Ramsingh.]   In 1994 a UN Human Development report stated that what we are now seeing is: “an arresting picture of unprecedented human progress and unspeakable human misery, of humanity’s advances on several fronts mixed with humanity’s…
• September 7, 2018

  The great human paella

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, September 2018.]                           Walk around any medium sized town in this part of the world and you will see something different. Compared to say, Britain or the USA, here on the average wall in public places,…
• August 27, 2018

  On Diagonal Avenue

            Here is the woman who walks With a chest like a man Carrying two Bowling balls in a bag   And here is the hair-lip man Who pours two packets of sugar Into his coffee cup With two hands as two fists   Now a different man Who gesticulates As…
• August 21, 2018

  Work, money, machines

    [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2018.]  My twin brother is a poet. Usually when I tell my adult English students this they ask me how he is able to survive economically. They are always surprised when I say that Australia has an unemployment benefit paid monthly by the government…
• August 7, 2018

  The colours of Asturias

    the flag of the region (if we must have any damn flags at all)   should be green black and red   Asturias is certainly verdant green but it is also black   the black of the miner’s lung and the almost permanent colour of his stained spit it is also that sightless place…