Flying backwards to yesterday Was I flying backwards into a nostalgic and unreal fantasy about a past life? Even now Zambia feels like home to me, the place closest to my heart where I feel most deeply rooted. I lived in Zambia for 22 years and my dream had always been to have a plot of land, build […]
The Ballad of the Public Library
THE BALLAD OF THE (P)UBL(I)C LIBRARY I walked past the *UBL*C LIBRARY where the pavement is piled up in heaps to the shop with non-see wood windows by the SUPA NOVA LEBANESE EATS. *** As I strolled past a man selling apples I saw a gutter where dealers deal dollars and a man keeps a rainbow in bottles and a […]
The Shaping of Water
The Shaping of Water Such a lovely thing happened to me today. My first novel The Shaping of Water has appeared on the Facebook Page and Website of Gadsden Publishers in Lusaka Zambia. This is the right place for my book to be – Zambia is the home of this novel. You can see the video about the book here […]
Issam Kourbaj, artist and mentor – “Dark Water, Burning World”
Wonderful good fortune Sometimes you know that you have been really lucky! I was when I met Issam Kourbaj, a Syrian artist in Cambridge. I can’t remember who told me about Issam’s workshops but I went along to one without a clue about what to expect. Possibly I heard about Issam from someone at Cambridge Artworks where I had a […]
Votes for women, the working classes, men, and the dangers of a single story
Women, the vote, and the stories told about it 100 years later On March 8th I will join friends to celebrate International Women’s Day. It is always fun. Its great to be celebrating a centenary since British women got the vote. The vote was only for women then, who, like me now, had property – but hold on! 100 years […]