tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-268262922009-07-11T20:48:38.876+01:00<i>“Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted by the cloud-moving wind---filled with a strong desire to wander.”</i>—Bashō.Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.comBlogger362125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-11456174754550476032009-07-06T15:26:00.015+01:002009-07-06T20:31:01.958+01:00

There is more to being a business consultant than leaving a trail of half-full coffee cups across your client’s office, marking the desks you have visited in the course of your investigations. Your notes also have to be written up into a report revealing valuable insights which, convention has it, your client’s staff could not have achieved by themselves.My task was to carry out a Risk Assessment

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-3960364161494726872009-07-04T21:02:00.012+01:002009-07-06T20:32:53.396+01:00

I had intended to take my well-trodden valley path, a fruitful place for broodings which I’ve several times captured and preserved by posting them on this blog. But a different plan revealed itself as I progressed. The first leg was walking with K to her work at the hospital, about a mile away. After we said goodbye I passed through the back gate on to the main road down the hill. At the front

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-44778338583920447312009-06-24T09:32:00.004+01:002009-06-24T09:47:01.472+01:00

I ask myself why I don’t write here more often. Since January 2008, I’ve wanted to post something daily. What prevents? The biggest obstacle is some self-imposed rules, very constraining ones, so that however much I scribble, little emerges to see the light of day. The most important rule is to write from some kind of compelling intensity, preferably an exaltation. Anything less doesn’t seem

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-38227827553973101412009-06-10T05:34:00.010+01:002009-06-19T14:02:30.560+01:00

At four minutes past four a lone blackbird on a chimneypot opposite my house starts his song, tentative but persistent. The sky is lightening, he tells the world. This is no time to stay unconscious. Because he speaks in blackbird language, I don’t really know the meaning of his telling, but only guess that his message is designed for other blackbirds of the species turdus merula. Soon the

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-4280099796166621472009-05-28T17:47:00.046+01:002009-06-25T08:19:20.240+01:00

Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes Castle, 1921If I have a favourite spot it is Cowes, or more precisely five acres overlooking the Solent, the strait which separates the Isle of Wight from the English mainland. I lived there aged thirteen for a year; and again at seventeen, at a different house nearby. Each was a front-row seat at a non-stop theatre of marine activity. You could watch the ceaseless

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-63313587706147617722009-05-16T21:20:00.019+01:002009-05-17T20:30:50.757+01:00

I suppose I’m generally a fatalist, accepting what comes. “Che sarà, sarà / Whatever will be, will be”. So I rarely have cause to pray for anything. In small ways, I can impose my creative ideas through focused effort and perseverance: for instance keeping the house and garden shipshape. But my scope is narrow, and when I desire a change which I cannot bring about personally, I don’t join

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-30208712772383548872009-05-10T19:45:00.051+01:002009-06-25T08:11:30.587+01:00

It’s the 6th of August 1962. I’m sitting on the steps outside the Duomo, Florence’s cathedral, trying to work out whether I’m a student, an ex-student or merely a tourist. I’ve recently arrived from Marseille, where I spent some weeks—I've no idea how many; and I have not yet located my fellow-students of Italian language and literature. They are not the reason I’m here, but it would be nice to

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-87236542849580362722009-05-04T20:11:00.023+01:002009-05-06T09:06:00.798+01:00

On a morning like this I feel a strong call to take the valley path, on account of the clear sky, the expectant hush as in a theatre when the curtain is about to go up, the pure tang in the air. I speak as if these are qualities of the valley itself, affecting equally all who live and breathe and toil in its folds, rather than my own state of mind. Outer or inner? Such a question is always

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-75656913721385890682009-04-26T06:04:00.007+01:002009-04-26T09:23:12.301+01:00

It was increasing impatience with (or even revulsion from) woolly Romanticism which led in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to movements in art and literature where form and colour were pursued as if for their own sakes, to create new worlds of experience, which in a sense parted company with Nature.“The nature of a work of art is to be not a part, nor yet a copy of the real world (as we

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-16335677358897870082009-04-21T05:01:00.012+01:002009-04-21T08:57:54.529+01:00

I hold the art of writing in too high regard to dare call myself writer. I think I shall change my Profile: occupation Gentleman. Writing, like any pastime fit for this kind of person and the female equivalent, is an arena of infinite striving, especially when, as in my case, its only object is to express what cannot be said. I’m obliged to content myself with harvesting a little from the

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-58015871709590868882009-04-09T13:11:00.008+01:002009-04-09T17:43:39.853+01:00

Faculty? I mean the university rather than the human kind. Well, both. Over at Hippocrates Got Lost, we were talking about hospital chaplains: ostensibly the conundrum of who should pay them. This has led to a discussion. We all agree that they help the patients get better, or give them palliative comfort. So this led to the question “How?”Scientifically, it’s called the placebo effect, said one

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-5948507212619858092009-04-08T08:20:00.009+01:002009-04-08T09:02:55.976+01:00

It’s 3am and I can’t decide between tea to wake me up or hot milk to send me back to sleep. Why not both together? I end up improvising Indian chai, brewing some tea with ginger, cloves, cinnamon, allspice and dark sugar all boiled in milk. It tastes authentic enough. Decision-making is not my strong suit. A week ago I decided to post here every day: you can see that that failed. I can’t please

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-7063357236591580972009-04-01T14:58:00.036+01:002009-04-03T17:31:24.616+01:00

“We all want. We all need. When want overpowers need, our perspective gets skewed. I say, want all you want—wanting motivates. However, need very little and you will almost always be satisfied.” (Pauline’s latest post made me think, and my comment on her post expanded afterwards into the stuff below.)Yes, but when I need very little, I don’t buy the shiny new car. When enough people think like me

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-41452699989408481382009-03-30T06:19:00.007+01:002009-03-30T19:46:37.420+01:00

I’ve been meaning to write more about happiness, but the topic is elusive to say the least and it seems there has not been enough time. I wasn’t sure until yesterday what this meant (what interval of unbroken time would be enough?), but this morning, rising at 4.30 in the morning I know even more clearly, for in my dream I have been composing an intricate post, setting out everything, which in

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-77787817240191283792009-03-18T07:02:00.007Z2009-03-18T09:41:25.864Z

I argued with Charles Bergeman a while ago on the topic of happiness: whether, for example, a five-year-old child could have said to its teacher something like: “I don’t want to be anything when I grow up, I just want to be happy.”I said it didn’t ring true and then I promised to write a post about it, and drafted many words, and brooded further for some days in my various spaces for brooding (

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-38601001249922028102009-03-12T08:21:00.013Z2009-06-10T09:44:25.167+01:00

I mentioned in my last that Dolomite Strongholds is illustrated by the author, with his photos, colour lithographs and pen drawings. As I browsed this beautifully-produced book, a delicate sheet of folded paper slid out, containing pen drawings (traced on top of original pencil sketches) on both sides. None of these were incorporated into the book, so they are beyond mere rare. I feel it’s my

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-79208193698326466802009-03-11T17:19:00.015Z2009-03-13T20:18:58.087Z

There has passed into my temporary possession a little volume, illustrated by the author, who was also my great-grandfather, entitled Dolomite Strongholds: the last untrodden peaks; published in 1894.Don’t you love that Victorian prose, its characteristic style at once lofty and light, beloved of those who would make parodies of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, particularly those relating

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-54997743684263072832009-03-07T19:00:00.016Z2009-03-10T07:19:04.131Z

I’m walking through Hughenden Park, pondering the suitcase of old photos, wondering what I can tell and what I cannot. There is no point in showing the emotive or personal ones because it will be impossible to share the feelings they evoke without a volume of history and explanation. I have picked out two whose interest doesn’t depend on a family connection. As ever, click to see a bigger

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-87473041596049837882009-03-05T22:07:00.007Z2009-03-06T06:11:45.977Z

I've been loaned a set of family photos and it's a voyage of discovery, reminding me of aspects of my childhood and introducing me to the childhood of my own grandparents. Dates: 1946, 1955, 1884, 1900. I'll write more, but it's late.

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-20950567194459057262009-03-02T18:53:00.016Z2009-03-05T19:05:41.912Z

Click to see large size, bigger than the original which is 4"x3".It must have been taken by a professional photographer, for I don’t suppose amateurs would have been able to do much indoor photography in 1867. I am not sure how it would have been illuminated: perhaps by igniting a heap of magnesium powder whilst the shutter was held open, for there was no way then to synchronize flash with the

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-19880479285664004272009-02-25T15:59:00.011Z2009-02-25T21:10:01.595Z

I learned to read at my grandmother’s knee, before the age of five. We used a Victorian primer, Reading without Tears: it proved itself worthy of the name and I worked through it in a few days, mostly on my own. I remember being frustrated with the word “parlour” near the book’s end: a word I’d never heard spoken, but which I could have recited anyway, if only it had been spelt “parlor” in the

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-77958225198047289782009-02-12T22:33:00.029Z2009-02-16T08:31:30.850Z

Last night I watched My Left Foot, in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays the real-life Christy Brown, born to a family of thirteen in a Dublin slum with severe cerebral palsy. To his parents, it’s out of the question that he should be abandoned in an institution, but they cannot afford the home care and treatment that would help him. He can neither walk nor talk so is treated as a mental defective,

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-63888284153214448382009-02-10T21:05:00.009Z2009-02-11T11:21:56.498Z

The last two days I’ve been stuck indoors with a heavy cold and a raised temperature. Not even tasting the fresh air outside, and my head thickly congested, I’m unable to activate that part of the brain that’s a spokesman for the soul, but I thought I might just start anyhow, and see if in half an hour the Muse might be sufficiently invoked to lend a hand in publishing something. (It actually

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-64401763723225850652009-02-05T13:08:00.013Z2009-02-06T04:54:22.121Z

If a blog can merit its own patron saint, then I choose Basho, that wayfarer and Zen monk whom I commemorate above with a quotation. In his travel writings—prose interspersed with haiku—he tours Japan on the pretext of pilgrimages. (See typical extract below, in my first comment.) I went a little further afield yesterday, drawn by two attractions in the same vicinity. One was marked on the map as

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26826292.post-81737998966578407122009-02-03T13:35:00.018Z2009-02-03T23:42:30.935Z

By kindly grace of destiny, I have a whole house to roam in, so there should be no need to go wayfaring outside, where it’s cold, especially as my leg hurts and I’m waiting for the postman, who’s due to deliver a package that won’t fit through the slot in the door. I can roam around indoors: so convenient for writing, and I can do tidying in the meantime, for I can’t seem to get any inspiration

Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com6