Bren

A circuitous route – the same-old, same-old – but not so taken for granted as once it was.

Hot grey asphalt, its dull top layer peeled back by sun and tyres, glistening wet and black under, suggestive of a just-laid stickiness.

Pavements littered with the faded shadows of chalked rainbow messages to un-caped crusaders or old-fashioned hopscotch…[Read more]

Not entirely incidentally, there’s a certain resonance for me in all this. Caerleon was where my mother lived for nearly four decades, and so I have a passing, though not intimate, familiarity with the area Arthur Machen loved so much – though I have no doubt that he would be appalled if he could see it today, with the M4 passing within a couple o…[Read more]

Excellent blog, Richard. I fear my “to be read” list has acquired some new items.

Between 2011 and 2013, for some eighteen months, I participated in a ‘Small stones’ project; a daily moment of intense observation. Many were made during the twelve minute walk (six there, six back) to buy a morning paper. This is a 396 word selection.

Autumn

Stepping stones of yellow sycamore
stuck to the rain-damp road

And the sky this mor…[Read more]

Well done, Libby, thoroughly deserved.

Well done, Libby – so full of intrigue and resonance – and thinks to Raine for setting such a thought-provoking theme that I was actually inspired to write something. Oh, and yes, that bread-knife is still in daily use.

Well done, Libby! Loved your piece. Interesting to read the stories behind the objects from everyone.

Thank you Raine – both for setting such an interesting, informative and though-provoking challenge, and for picking my favourite as winner. Well done Libby.

I don’t remember this blog in detail, but I do remember thinking what a lucky individual you were to find such a wonderful spot.

‘Shall we draw down the blinds?’

One of the things I took away from my mother’s house when she had to go into a care home, not long after our move to Wales in 2011, was a bread-knife. They don’t make ’em like this any more: it has a bone handle, smoothed from decades of use, and a finely serrated blade (in contrast to the great hacking teeth of…[Read more]

Bringing a little light

I suspected, on reading the rules, if I did submit anything it would be something of a cheat, because there’s not a lot that’s actually old in itself in this room. Not much in the way of ‘things’ really, anywhere in the house (although I do have, in the loft, my great-grandfather’s two writing boxes such as Jill describes…[Read more]