There may be snow this year, and icicles; crunchy footsteps, misty breath and bubbles in puddles under frost-frozen glass; crystals may sparkle in winter-white grass. Like when fresh-fallen snow blankets the ground, pure Christmas love is quietly profound; and, as...
Hospital-clean, the cold-washed concrete floor drains towards the middle, flushing muck to sluices. Wide galvanised sliding doors hang on corrugated wall panels tucked under impermanent eaves. Strip lighting — and hydraulic noise from electric pumps attached to...
For a few moments, maybe some minutes, let’s dreamy drift into the feather crush of London’s clouds of cherry blossom bliss. The buds, which season-swell with ruby flush, fill as racing pulses fill impatient flesh with rhapsodical urges to burst. Then Beauty...
As winter ends, winter starts again. Late March warmth lies with coughs and fever, face-grey shadows darken longer days, and high-sky sun shines on windowless wards. Hospital green is the season’s colour. Garden foxes play in rose-dawn light, rising doubt hangs in...
Nights are the worst: dark acres of time areunfilled with anything but low noiseas cars burr along the northbound carriageway. Mum is cold, anxious in unsettled grief.There’s no point getting up: without him there’snothing to do. Days see diversions butnow, why does...
It is pretty ugly between Gravesend and Stone Crossing. Puzzling through Rosherville,to Northfleet’s exhausted ragstone quarry,Kimberly Clark is making Andrex. At Ebbsfleet, the footpath runs in zigzagsspanning voids and empty strips of railwaybehind galvanised...
Same train, same bus, same strange metal giraffes.This, though, is different. The storm wind is armed:tiny water dumdums, as hard as ice,spear and splay, needling my defenceless face. Plastic mud-larky litters the foreshore:old rope, smashed flowerpots and bookies’...
Waxy sunshine, low in the winter sky,makes twilight in the middle of the day. Weird palavers of birds – lapwings we think -stretch and compress: twist, swoop, and come to rest. Flat against the north horizon, motionless,stand strange giraffes on London Gateway...
From my Granny (Alice Blodwen) to her son, my uncle, Iolo Dyfnan Davies.29 January 1920 – 5 April 2009 I am remembering my Uncle Iolo with a bitter-sweet chuckle. The letter dates from 1940, as does the photo, I’d guess. It begins: “Now that our...
I am a professional writer with 30 years’ experience as a business journalist. I have worked at The Times, Reuters, The London Evening Standard and The Independent. I am a broadcaster, lecturer and author.