Clearing out earlier this year, I came across my daughter’s old revision guide-books. These were produced by a company called CGP to condense the basic biology, chemistry and physics needed for her to pass Key Stage Three, and subsequently Core, Higher and Advanced science GCSE. Unlike...
The story of “We Do Not Kill Children” runs basically from 26th September to 15th November, but reaches its climax on Hallowe’en. Organising the dates was a complicated business when writing it, and so I always think of October as Dorac’s month. The following therefore...
The Fifth Commandment is to honour one’s parents (notably both parents.) “Honour” is not the same thing as either “love” or “obey.” Paul perhaps is extrapolating, when he says (Ephesians 6: 1-3) “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honour your father and...
We all know, we’ve known for months, that something called COP26 is happening in November in Glasgow. (The Pre-COP conference is happening NOW in Milan.) How much more do we know? Until writing this post I didn’t even know what COP stands for ("Conference of the...
Before I start, I must apologise for the almost two-month hiatus in the blog. It's been a busy summer, and I'm afraid the blog-drafting fell down the list of priorities. I'll try to improve. In the meantime, I hope all my readers had a refreshing...
Hello all. Thank you to those who liked and commented on "The Naming of City." Your comments were extremely characteristic! The book is not nearly finished, Clint. Progress is fairly steady but slow. The current title under consideration is "Naming People and Places." What do you think? In...
Listen! Once there was a priest named John. Once and not so long ago. He was a most holy man who like many such wanted to make everyone else as holy as him. His family had much honour in the land of Jaryar, and so they...
Each week the Guardian Review asks an author a similar set of questions, collectively called “The Books That Made Me.” Some of the authors I’ve even heard of. Two of the categories are: The book I think is most overrated, and The book I think is...
So - I was planning to give you a lengthy rant in the form of an anecdote. Yesterday was the Day. The day when some person or algorithm decided it was my turn to be told that my National Insurance number was about to be frozen...
How do you organise your appointments? Recently I was on the phone trying to arrange when to meet someone (isn’t this a nice new custom? Meeting people?) and I said something like “I’ll check the diary… or the calendar…” In other words, I might need to...