Sumangali Morhall | Auspicious Good Fortune

A Chicken and Egg Situation I spent a while teaching English as a second language in Thailand many years ago, and had a splendid time. Not only did I find the language (especially the written characters) more beautiful than my own English equivalent; the culture, the etiquette, the people, the weather, the food, everything beguiled more »

Old News: Gardening is In Once again in the UK it has been suggested that we are behind the eco-friendly times, now caught red-faced and red-handed with basket-full of imported vegetables. The production and transportation of food is responsible for 23% of our carbon footprint; above home energy, personal travel, and running shared services like more »

Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov is a living paradigm in the world of music and poetry, justly lauded in his Russian homeland and throughout the world. Tapping the ‘infinite silence’ within as a source of his prolific creativity, his songs are his direct interpretation of the universal musical consciousness.

There was an earthquake in England last month. It was a small one, but our biggest in a quarter century, so it caused due commotion. It woke my friend in town, and in her half-sleep she thought the wind had got up and was buffeting her house. It woke me too, I remembered later. “It’s more »

Alleluia: Qui timent Dominum “He healeth those that are broken in heart: and bindeth up their wounds.” This line shines from the page handed to me at the entrance of King’s College Chapel, part of a sung mass I am about to hear.

English was secretly my favourite subject at school. I say secretly because as a teen it’s only considered proper to laugh at those stuffy poets in tights and ruffs or Brylcreem and cravats, puffing on long pipes in leather chairs. The fact is I, (and maybe secretly everyone) found them brilliantly riveting.

I was brought up as an atheist, so it may count as rebellion that I went to church today: a Sunday… perhaps… until you hear I went as a tourist. I am not an atheist, far from it. I must get that straight. Straight away. I never have been. I am not a Christian either. more »

What of Rydal Cave, I ask? Why is the Concert-In-The-Cave Not-In-The-Cave this year? Stones were falling from its roof. Such scant facts were enough from which to fashion a legend over the past twelve months: that Adarsha’s mighty voice brought down the cave last year and it is now no more than a trembling pile of shale.