When we arrive in Manali in the Indian Himalayas, it’s a lovely day, cool with sunshine – a relief after the humidity of Delhi. Tomorrow we climb a small peak 4,000 metres (13,400ft) – well small in terms of the surrounding mountains that stretch high into clouds. I’ve been in the Alps but the size … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Summit”
A few months after the evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, two boys, me aged five and my brother (eight) perched on a pile of trunks at Southampton Docks, while our mother queued to hand in our gas-masks and ration books, The trunks had ‘cabin luggage’ stencilled on them, or ‘not wanted on voyage,’ which meant … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “A Passage To India”
This is a story: of evolution, of the earth, of Homo Sapiens, of organisms, ideas, trade, colonisation, wars, and those ideas and concepts that we as a species hang onto. But it’s also a story of how a germ of an idea evolved into my latest book, Ancient Anchors.
Most of my haiku moments occur in nature and the outdoors, but here’s one from an antique shop in Helensburgh: mirrors mirroredmultiple reflectionsfront, back, all angles stray garden moggyattracted by tai chiSettles down to watch fill, lift, float and danceflitting over dark brown beachbright white plastic bag
Garden Pond Autumn is the time of year when flowers and leaves fall into my garden pond. They drift in constantly shifting patterns and juxtapositions of colour – amazingly beautiful natural happenings – each one a haiku moment. standing on the bankI’m sure the river flows South –birds know otherwise
We’ve got a late lecture so you can wait here or the Glanrafon. I’ll hitch out to Caernarfon and come back with the boys –in Tom’s mini-van. We never saw Lindsay again. On the journey back from Caernarfon to Bangor there was an horrendous car crash. No seat belts in the sixties. The steering wheel … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “The Day God and I Parted Ways”
It was my first winter in Glasgow. The snow was yet to arrive. The snow did arrive, in drifts. I had been chauffeured around in Madras, now I had to fend my way in swirling snow in a cold Glasgow, on buses and public transport. Snow was beautiful. The feel of the snowflakes falling on … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Snow!”
Long before lockdown I was used to aloneness. I was divorced 29 years ago so have had lots of practice. But even during the years of my marriage there were countless lonely, lockdown days… quelling frustration and boredom, trying to fill endless time in foreign places where friends were few and opportunities limited. Two of … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Piggy in the Muddle”
Back in the 1950s there was little forewarning of sudden changes in the weather. I was at secondary school then, travelling daily along with many others to Monmouth, some eleven miles distant from my home in Ross-on-Wye. At that time the A40 didn’t have the smooth gradients that it has today – there were two … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Afternoon Snowfall”
My memoir has to be of Princess Diana the joy of her wedding day and Oh, that dress with the long train and the little page boys. What she must have thought going up the aisle of Westminster Abbey to meet her prince. A fairy tale day for all with not a cloud in the … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “A Great Lady”
You sent me a video, last tram, our tram, the family strung along its track from the greener suburbs of northern Sheffield to the back- to- backs nearer the steel works. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, two spinster great aunts still in the tiny terrace where they grew up with 9 others, all lived along the … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Last Tram”
The first time that I had something published was in article in the Scots Magazine in March 1979. It was entitled ‘Ben Ime by Moonlight’ and was about a night ascent, in winter, of Ben Ime near the Rest and Be Thankful pass, north west of Arrochar. It was one of the coldest spells of … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “The First Time That I Was Published”
There has always been an unresolved tension in gardening between the extent to which we feel the garden belongs to nature and the extent to which we feel it belongs to us: whether it is an expression of nature or of human artistic aspirations. It is a matter of how much domination and control over … Continue reading Haiku Journal – 4
The very first time that I entered a hospital was in 1945, when I was four. My mother was in a sanitorium, my father in the Navy, and I was in the care of my grandparents. Severe measles had left me with an abscessed eardrum requiring minor surgery. Not wishing to alarm me, my well-meaning … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “The Very First Time”
The very first time that I flew into Athens I knew I had come home. From the window of the aeroplane I could see the ghostly illumination of the mighty Acropolis. It was the strangest feeling, never experienced before or since. It was a night flight and there had been delays so it was 6 … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Going Home”
