Sunday Blog 121 – 4th February 2024 For a brief period while in London I flirted with acting and improvisation classes. Once I had to try my hand at playing an East Ender talking things over with a mate. I was supposed to be poor, in trouble with the law, in a tight corner.“Stop!” The …
Author Archives: pipbrennan
Seeing sepia in colour
Sunday Blog 120 – 28 January 2024 Old photo albums marinade us in the difficult truth that everything passes. A picture from the late 1920s of my mother as a toddler, smiling in front of the rose garden her father created from the heat and dust in the small town of Winchester in mid-west Western …
Glimmer of goodbye
Sunday Blog 119 – 21 January 2024 I was scandalised the first time I heard of the Buddhist notion that we have no right to the fruits of work. Despite stumbling on this knowledge as a teenager, as I near my sixtieth year I’m still constantly falling forward into the future. Especially for those tasks …
The Red Room is empty
The Red Room is empty Sunday Blog 118 – 14th January 2023 Of all the rooms that posed a challenge in the recent clear-out of my family home, it was the Red Room. So named for the smart red tulip wall paper installed on its walls in the seventies once I’d moved out. This wallpaper …
Middle of the night musing
Sunday Blog 117 – 7th January 2024 Middle of the night musing Perhaps I am strange but I love the gap in the night between my first sleep and my second. A sweet pause where I am refreshed and delivered into the deep quiet of the night. Nothing to do. A clear schedule. Once I …
Mulberry Tree
Sunday Blog 116 – 31st December 2023 The last day of year, the last Sunday blog for 2023. Christmas day 2023 was the last one we will ever celebrate in our family home of 65 years. We had three generations make use of a jar and a notebook to write up our favourite memories from …
David
Sunday Blog 116 – 24th December 2023 With my second-last blog for 2023 I’m sharing a nugget from a recent online writing course I did with Dani Shapiro to help re-boot my writing practice. Dani Shapiro is one of my favourite authors – she writes both fiction and non-fiction and teaches writing classes every now …
The long goodbye
Sunday Blog 115 – 17th December 2023 This is my fifth blog on the 1910 novel Howards End because-well-I maintain it has something important to say about many things. And today I’m pondering the long goodbye to my family home. What better than to review what Mrs Wilcox had to say about her family home, …
Your loved ones are not OK
Sunday Blog 114 – 10th December 2023 So often I said this in the last few years – if I could ignite a community movement, it would be to remind people to visit their frail aged loved ones. Now I come to write this, I’m choked by my confusion, mired in my own hesitations. I …
Vale Dawnie
Sunday Blog 113 – 3rd December 2023 This is a visual tribute dedicated to a beautiful visual artist, Dawn Meader. Tuesday this week she was laid to rest in a moving funeral service. Just one year ago, in her sixtieth year on this earth, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. She didn’t fight cancer – …