My wife, daughter and I took the dogs to the beach the other day, and while that particular beach is always very special to us, I had no idea just how special this visit was going to be. The stones had all largely been washed down to the shore line, leaving a vast sandy arena … More Peregrines – an hour of magic on a Dorset beach
Yes. This.
An interview with me on my life and my rather unconventional career. … More Desert Island Discs, of a sort
I got exhausted, full-on mind and body exhausted, and blogging two thousand words a day didn’t help. It was fun, but it became almost maniacal, and in the end I burned out. So I’m having a bit of a rest, from everything, to try to get some perspective back. I started practicing mindfulness a few … More Normal service will be resumed as soon as I’ve got my zen back
When I first read this, having just gone through a few days of personal hell – which I may or may not write about when I’ve got some energy back – I thought “yeah right, easy for you to say”, but you know what, he’s right. “You should use your energy and time and effort … More Discipline Your Mind
A most glorious short film that makes you ask the big questions – why are we doing this? Why are we beating ourselves up every waking hour, merely to survive? There has to be a better way, surely, if only we had the courage to escape from the safety of drudgery. Edit: as it turned … More Somerset People
And this, folks, is animation… A producer acquaintance just shared this on Facebook, and I had to do the same on here. I’ll never forget the first time I met Bob, mid 90s in a pub in Soho, we had a long conversation about negative equity. He was talking, but all I could hear in … More The legend that was Bob Godfrey
Might not be writing too many long polemics for a few days – day job to go back to after a busy weekend off, boiler to get working, house to clean after the weekend influx of friends, relatives and dogs (all of which was fun of course, if exhausting!), aged parents to sort out, again, … More No politics, just dogs in the snow
A pub full of alcoholic psychics, an apprentice witch who prefers vacuum cleaners to broomsticks and a ghostly black dog that houses the spirit of an eleventh century monk called Eilmer, who history states once built himself wings and flew from the roof of the Abbey, and who has been trying to recreate the feat … More The Flying Monk
I’m doing a bit of tidying on the blog site, slowly converting all the old posts to the new ‘blocks’ format, which on balance I do like. Hopefully it will make it read and work better. I haven’t really delved into the depths of WordPress formatting before – I really should have done, of course, … More A little housekeeping
Alastair Swinnerton 