An August evening in Edinburgh & three Englishmen step into a black cab on Princes Street. I pull the door closed behind me with a resounding clunk & ask the cabbie if he can drop us at decent Bar in the Old Town. He cogitates and after a lengthy pause replies wth a single word in an accent as thick as a bowl of lumpy porridge: Aye.
… More Sassenach @ The Festival
I pedal away from the beach, away from the pasty skinned holiday makers from Northern Europe, the temporary migrants in search of vitamin D, past the kiosks and the shops selling knock off sunglasses and gaudy beach towels, past the boutiques selling dresses that will never be worn back home, soon I am on the … More Yannis’ Bar
Corfu saturday night & there’s a party going on in my rooms, I am the host. One solitary Englishman & all the rest Greek. I did not plan this, nor indeed did I even realise it was happening, until that is I woke up at 3.30am on sunday morning to find my entire body covered … More Bloody Karma
As my first full day in Corfu draws to a close my stomach begins to grumble & growl, the monster needs feeding. I’ve heard that there’s a little festival a couple of kilometres along the coastline with food and music so off I head off on my pushbike as the twilight comes, along little country … More Panigyri – The Feast
June 4th – Trump is coming to town, divisive- loathsome-rascist-climate-change-denying-mysoginistic-wanker-shit-house-excuse of a man. You may glean from my words that I am not a great fan. From here on I will just call him 45, this seems rather fitting on a number of levels:- (i) Two digits is all I would give him. (ii) In some … More 45 4.6 with Fried Chicken
Fifty six – am I really that old The very idea leaves me cold I refuse to be wrinkly just wait & see Botox, colonics, viagra for me Getting old – bollocks to that Receding hairline, just wear a hat Hair grafts, massage, yoga as well Ageing process – go to hell Grow … More June 25th
Were I the sort of bloke given to romanticism I might describe these April nights in Goa as sultry and steamy affairs. The reality is that they are long, sleepless and sweaty. The only way I manage any shut eye is to lie on my bed naked as Adam before the fall with the fan … More When the bubble bursts
The way she danced on a summer evening The shape of her fingers, traced by mine Those eyes that sparkled Perspiration mingling The peace of early morning, Her breathing a song I lost myself there.
Take a look at the picture, some sixties hippie? Actually this photo was taken in 1917. The fella in the photo was one of the ‘Nature Boys’ a small bunch of guys who in the early years of the twentieth century were perhaps what you might call proto-hippies, or forefathers of the flower power generation, and maybe much more besides.
… More Nature Boys
We are the music-makers And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers And sitting by desolate streams; World losers and world forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of … More Dreamer in the Dream
