St Pancras to Kings Cross station Walking from St Pancras to Kings Cross, I’m eager not to keep John waiting in the train station bar, but also to not appear out of the sync with the pace of London. There is also an anxiety about ‘getting it right’, not missing another sailing ship. Coming toContinue reading “London, October: in search of meaningful rebeginning”
Tag Archives: Writing
Hope against an undercurrent of rage
It was a nice sunny evening at the train station in Wakefield; the kind of romantic spring light that gives every place the elegance it deserves. But just as I began to feel a mental ease from knowing that my day had gone well, it was interrupted by an angry-sounding commotion in the station’s somewhatContinue reading “Hope against an undercurrent of rage”
Wallace and Grommit – A North where the trauma of Thatcherism never happened.
Two staples of British TV culture returned this Xmas, Wallace and Grommit and Outnumbered. And before I start, I really enjoy both of them. I used to love Wallace and Grommit as a child, with it’s dry humour, that manages to remain humorous whatever age you are. Whilst Outnumbered felt very comforting to watch aroundContinue reading “Wallace and Grommit – A North where the trauma of Thatcherism never happened.”
‘NEW BRUTALITY’ (2024, mixed media on paper)
This is ‘NEW BRUTALITY’ Sorry for being trapped in the 20th century dealing with the 21st. And sorry for being unable to make any sense whatsoever – locked as we are inside the maddening house, where a ‘just do it’ Californian approach to life has left us all burnt out people on a burning planet. DeepContinue reading “‘NEW BRUTALITY’ (2024, mixed media on paper)”
First protest vote as tragedy, the second as farce.
‘Sleepy John’ has had his eyes off the ball. I’m not as sharp as I was in the 2010s (although, who is?) Wounded and winded by the personal and political over the last 5 years, improvements to my general quality of life as I entered middle age became the only real priority. The mental gymnasticsContinue reading “First protest vote as tragedy, the second as farce.”
The waste that calls your name
If everything up here is exposed, then this bleached landscape is the necessary negative of the urban spaces below where addiction has become the modus operandi; where every stone is upturned, leaving no secrets, no mystery, no object to desire, just short circuits to quick fixes. …and it’s for good reason I come here, onceContinue reading “The waste that calls your name”
Near desert…
Langsett remains weird. An intrusion of the outside. Dream-like, in that all our dreams are breached by that which shouldn’t be there. Nor should I… be here, ‘down there’. I’m lost. That horizon line that greats you as you ascend the first set of hills, with its weirdly rhythmical monotony, calls you forward… Yet itContinue reading “Near desert…”
Neither here nor there – somewhere only fleeting.
I stand at the railway station anxiously tensing my stomach to look as flat as possible, arms tight and reluctant to leave their position next to my rib cage. It’s all so familiar, countless adulthood hours stranded in discontent at nearby transport terminals, waiting to be delivered from this daily dis-ease. A kind of inertia,Continue reading “Neither here nor there – somewhere only fleeting.”
John B Ledger 