“Congratulations, Simon; we’d like to offer you the Head of Year position.” It took a moment for those words to sink in, a very brief silence before my smile and thank you confirmed my overjoyed acceptance. I remember that silence […]
I plonked the bag of shopping onto the dining table and nipped out to the kitchen to pop the kettle on, another successful morning’s browsing done and dusted. A few minutes later, I returned to the living room, coffee in […]
It still staggers me to think that Rachel and I have been navigating life’s choppy currents together for twenty-two years at this point; a home, careers and a child, now almost an adult herself, and almost as old as I […]
On the south-facing slope of the large hill behind my home there is a cluster of trees, larches in fact, that stand sentinel above the other trees that face out into Swansea bay. True, there are other, more numerous, clusters […]
Or maybe that should read ‘Also strolled’. Probably. “Tsk” tuts Rachel, my wife. “Bloody post’s getting later all the time.” It’s true, it has gradually been clunking through the letterbox later and later over the last few years, so that […]
I’d never encountered one of them before, but one day he was just there, exactly as you might expect him – black-and-white hooped jersey redolent of so many Marcel Marceau routines, black beret placed at a jaunty angle atop his […]
A little precise, you may think, but I’m only so aware of the time due to it being the same time I always wake for work, even on this, the first day back following the Christmas break. I can’t remember […]
The little patch of earth sat there as a direct challenge to all our creative energies. Over the years we had seeded it, turfed it, covered it in wood chippings, planted it with flowers and even, at one point in […]
Although I am both an English teacher and a writer, I always seemed to have an uneasy relationship with words. This is not to say that I disliked them, or they me; in fact, I love words and welcomed them […]
You know how sometimes it always feels like you’re trying to catch lightning in a bottle? There’s always a train or a bus to catch, but you can’t afford to wait for a later one to come along because, of […]
The months have done their moonlight flit once again, seemingly disappearing overnight and taking with them a big chunk of the year, leaving us once more scratching our heads at the threshold to year’s end. I liken the change to […]
With These Hands My great-grandfather was a builder, as was my grandfather and most of his brothers; if I were to look hard enough, I could probably find the brick-and-mortar evidence of their working lives scattered across half the country. […]
