To those unfamiliar with the concept, sending ones children to boarding school is a shockingly weird thing to do. Imagine you had never heard of a boarding school before, and I explained to you that parents would not only choose, but spend huge amounts of money (the equivalent of the average UK wage after tax), … Continue reading Boarding Up the Soul
I’ve had writers constipation.. the literary yips. So much to write and yet for a litany of reasons I haven’t put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. A lot has happened in the last few months. I’ve started a few articles, keen to work through a problem, but slunk away. I could claim it’s … Continue reading Constipatience
At the end of the summer I made my first pilgrimage to Burning Man. It had sat resolutely on my bucket list for a few years and finally it was happening. The Burn has always appealed for a number of reasons. I love the values that emanate and encapsulate what it stands for – radical … Continue reading Burned Man
(or the art of Growing Down) Yesterday was my birthday. I was dressed as a ninja cow at a festival, squeezed into a west-country barn full of ‘Almost Farmous’ revellers. We were ‘The Moo Fighters’, naturally. Seconded only by ‘Daft Skunk’. The weekend consisted of dancing, laughing, drinking, firing water pistols at unsuspecting crowd members … Continue reading Adulescence
We are who we are. No matter how hard we try, we’re unlikely a Damascene moment will transform us into the person we’d always hoped we’d be. You might if you try over a number of years, change a bit. But it’s unlikely. Plus, we forget that we can get worse as well as better. Years … Continue reading Why Standing Still is Better Than Movement
Like many a seeker I found, lost, found and ultimately lost myself in Dharmasala. I remember thinking that if I was to get a tattoo at that time, as a 19 year-old is want to, it would have been of a traveller with a cane over his shoulder, with all his worldy possessions tied into … Continue reading Simply Solitude
Simpletom…?!? Are you still there? Is that you? Oh dear. This last couple of weeks, it’s just been Tom. Perhaps Stressedtom, Anxioustom or even Corporatetom…but frankly there needs to be some serious ember blowing on the coals of calm to be allowed to write here as Simpletom. In addition, it’s entirely of my own doing. … Continue reading Simply Loosing It
