Friday 13th September-Monday 23rd September 2019

Returning to Cuba always forces me to recalibrate. To reassess my status as both migrant and native. To re-examine my position as a foreign passport-holding citizen and the perennial unbreakable nexus with my country of birth. There’s also the added element of how I’m coming back this time: empty-handed. Not of valuables. Those arrived a day before I did. No, the issue is not my hands but my company. None. Zero. Zilch. I’m travelling back to Cuba on my own for the first time in twenty-two years.

The questions in my head chase each other like fox cubs in an…

One of the reasons why I became a pacifist years ago was the sudden realisation that most wars (I would probably say “all”, but let’s not be absolute, shall we?) are senseless. The brutality involved contrasts sharply with the glory they supposedly bring. Of course, there are conflicts that are necessary, either because of nations being invaded and having to defend themselves or border skirmishes that turn into full-on confrontations. One of these conflicts is the First World War, which became the backdrop for Ernest Hemingway’s wartime novel A Farewell to Arms.

I first read this book back in uni…

Week 31st May — 4th June 2021

On my way to Enfield today, I choose the Green Lanes route. I’m co-delivering a playground-based, week-long, half-term, cycling training programme. As I ease down the still-new, Holland-inspired, off-road cycle lane, my mind wanders off.

I think of those pioneer record-holders at the 1896 Olympic Games, seeking to improve their fixed-sprocket frames. The result was an increase in size of the front wheel with the pedals still on it (no chain yet, in those days). And that’s how the penny-farthing was born.

I imagine that if there were cycling instructors around back then, they’d have had a nightmare telling their…

What’s the point of pursuing apparently distorted ‘readings’ of the novel — i.e. Marxist/feminist?

AO4 expects you to acknowledge the effect the book has on different audiences — especially ones not guided by English teachers. (The teacher’s reading is influenced by need for clarity — a key to help write quick fix essays)

Also helps us avoid over-simplifying — there is no need to distinguish between our/my sense & sensibility reading and the intentions/character of the author; the former suggests a fairly dry/conservative figure; but how does this tally with her appetite for humour/nonsense and biographical sources.

The words above…

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 — Saturday 7th September 2019

In our younger years the mystery of a new relationship is what lights up the flame of desire. As we mature, we add other elements to the mystery. Curiosity is one of them. Faced with a new partner, sometimes we react with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of how we’ll measure up. But the more we live, the more we equip ourselves with handy tools to navigate these pre-relationship choppy waters. Once we overcome these obstacles, we’re left with a childlike curiosity.

Unless you kill your inner child as soon as you reach your teens (I didn’t!), curiosity in…

You may have laughed or cried. You may have perhaps indulged in hours of cogitation, your thoughts strongly interosculating and contaminating each other, giving birth to random ideas which will only find a logical existence after even deeper reflection. Or maybe you have chosen the easy, accessible text, the one that helps you “unwind” and forget about modern life’s constant demands.

Reading is like that, challenging or fun, or challenging and fun. Fiction is the epitome of this process, the semi- or pseudo-real world created for us, whose key we might obtain at the beginning, middle or end of the…

Week Monday 24th May — Friday 28th May 2021

It was an on-off, sudden-shower, sun-bursting type of morning ride today. On arriving at the school where I was working today I was greeted by a row of bicycles left outside. It never ceases to amaze me that children who leave their bicycles out when it’s raining are more concerned about wet seats than soaked helmets (also left outside).

Flashback: walking down a corridor I spotted a sign on one of the school’s display boards. It read “Together Everyone Achieves More” (TEAM). …

If I could give the Azeri-born, Germany-based, jazz singer and pianist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh another middle name (assuming Mustafa is her middle name) it would be ‘passion’. If she could have two surnames like us, denizens of the Spanish-speaking Americas, they would be ‘intensity’ and ‘vim’. Because that’s what I feel every time I play one of Aziza’s records.

I first became acquainted with this Azerbaijani musician’s oeuvre when I borrowed a CD entitled Women in Jazz from my local library. Her track Marriage Suite stood out immediately. I also got to see her live at the Cadogan Hall in…