Brevity in Writing
Brevity is concise and exact use of words. According to a proverb, brevity is the soul of wit. Flash fiction should be a thousand words or less. An extreme version is the six word story, of which the best example I know is: For sale: baby shoes. Never worn. It has...
Chekhov’s Gun and All Creatures Great and Small
Chekhov’s Gun is a writing principle which requires that if a gun is on display in act one, it must be used by act three. Claire and I were watching All Creatures Great and Small last night. Mrs Hall the housekeeper, played by Anna Madeley, left the veterinary...
Networking, Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi, and P2
Freemasonry has always been largely about networking. Roberto Calvi rang a bell. He was an Italian banker found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, the year I graduated from Oxford. I remembered that there had been some great scandal but couldn’t remember much...
Medgar Evers
I guess I should have heard of Medgar Evers. To my shame, I had not, but it’s never too late to learn. The Craft by John Dickie just keeps on delivering. Medgar Evans was a NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi. NAACP was the National Association for the Advancement of...
The Waiting Game
Today seems to be a day of waiting. I picked up my new phone yesterday and now I’m waiting for it to restore all the data from the cloud. You can probably tell from the photo why I needed a new phone. I made the mistake of having the old one in my back pocket, and...
Reunion
I’ve just returned from a reunion of the St Edmund Hall engineers class of 1979. Covid, or suspected Covid, left us two short. It always amazes me how we fit back together after forty-three years as if they had been a few weeks. Of course time and illness leaves a...
Intolerance
Intolerance is on my mind. I mentioned in my post connections that I’m reading The Craft by John Dickie. I will write a review in Readers Club when I’ve finished it. In the meantime, amongst the many things that have caught my attention, the first paragraph of chapter...
James Bond Day
Thanks to Alexander Armstrong on Classic FM, I have learnt that today 5th October is Global James Bond Day. Apparently this is because the first film in the franchise, Dr No was released on this day in 1962. The day became James Bond Day in 2012 to mark the 50th...
Strictly Writing
I love Strictly Come Dancing. It occurred to me that there are some similarities between dancing and writing. To start with there’s no telling in dancing. The story and emotion is all conveyed through showing, by movement and physical expression. Strictly is all about...
Brevity in Writing
Brevity is concise and exact use of words. According to a proverb, brevity is the soul of wit. Flash fiction should be a thousand words or less. An extreme version is the six word story, of which the best example I know is: For sale: baby shoes. Never worn. It has...
Chekhov’s Gun and All Creatures Great and Small
Chekhov’s Gun is a writing principle which requires that if a gun is on display in act one, it must be used by act three. Claire and I were watching All Creatures Great and Small last night. Mrs Hall the housekeeper, played by Anna Madeley, left the veterinary...
Networking, Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi, and P2
Freemasonry has always been largely about networking. Roberto Calvi rang a bell. He was an Italian banker found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, the year I graduated from Oxford. I remembered that there had been some great scandal but couldn’t remember much...
Medgar Evers
I guess I should have heard of Medgar Evers. To my shame, I had not, but it’s never too late to learn. The Craft by John Dickie just keeps on delivering. Medgar Evans was a NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi. NAACP was the National Association for the Advancement of...
The Waiting Game
Today seems to be a day of waiting. I picked up my new phone yesterday and now I’m waiting for it to restore all the data from the cloud. You can probably tell from the photo why I needed a new phone. I made the mistake of having the old one in my back pocket, and...
Reunion
I’ve just returned from a reunion of the St Edmund Hall engineers class of 1979. Covid, or suspected Covid, left us two short. It always amazes me how we fit back together after forty-three years as if they had been a few weeks. Of course time and illness leaves a...
Intolerance
Intolerance is on my mind. I mentioned in my post connections that I’m reading The Craft by John Dickie. I will write a review in Readers Club when I’ve finished it. In the meantime, amongst the many things that have caught my attention, the first paragraph of chapter...
James Bond Day
Thanks to Alexander Armstrong on Classic FM, I have learnt that today 5th October is Global James Bond Day. Apparently this is because the first film in the franchise, Dr No was released on this day in 1962. The day became James Bond Day in 2012 to mark the 50th...
Strictly Writing
I love Strictly Come Dancing. It occurred to me that there are some similarities between dancing and writing. To start with there’s no telling in dancing. The story and emotion is all conveyed through showing, by movement and physical expression. Strictly is all about...