Humans are colonisers. So are insects, viruses, fungi, plants, brambles and other animals. Humans are animals and like other animals, we ‘colonise’ the environment in which we find ourselves to make it into our habitat. It’s our nature to do so as it’s the nature of all living organisms. Ask online and you are told that the Oxford dictionary defines […]
Murder or not
Totalitarianism The dictionary says totalitarianism is a system of government that is centralised and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state. It means that someone living in such a state is not free to speak out or act without permission from the powers. From my brief experience of a police state, it is a terrifying place to live in. […]
The Literary Life and me
Posy Simmonds Posy Simmonds is a brilliant artist, acute satirist and eye-watering cartoonist who, in Literary Life Revisited, exposes authors, publishers and the book trade. Her work is currently on display in the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She has the essential gift of making you laugh at yourself. Funny Feminist Cartoons I became addicted to Posy Simmonds’s Mrs Weber’s Diary […]
Covent Garden Encounter
As I walked up from Covent Garden Tube to Neal’s Yard I saw my teenage son coming towards me. We had not planned or expected to see each other there or then. As we smiled at each other in recognition we both became aware that a small demonstration was taking place on the street between us. To my right was […]
On being non-gendered
I read this wonderful piece in the marvellous The Marginalian compiled by Maria Popova and thought with delight that it may explain me and perhaps other women of my generation. Ursula Le Guin writes: “I am a man. Now you may think I’ve made some kind of silly mistake about gender, or maybe that I’m trying to fool you, because […]