Politics-free Zone

We’re a funny creature aren’t we? No matter  what  age  we are  there’s still that love of novelty . We love toys when we are children. We are sometimes emulating something we see our parents do or copying things we see on the television screen or in films. As adults we fetishise objects  well beyond […]

Yes…”the Scottish Play”or “Macbeth”  …never to be uttered within a theatre lest it’s loosing leads to disaster. As I write this, Scotland’s declaration is still blowing in the wind . We’ll not know whether they have decided to abandon the cosy nest and swaddling of the UK and decide to hitch their own kite to […]

We were standing outside the barber shop .Mark was opening the shutters and two of his cutters were  chatting outside on the footpath .I had arrived as the  school- run rush thinned the early  traffic out.School was back after the summer and this was the perfect time for that monthly trim .All the little darlings […]

A murder of crows….or was that a murder of ravens? It has a great ring to it , hasn’t it? I wonder who came up with that descriptive collective. I suppose it’s lost in the swamps of time. It makes perfect poetic sense though. It’s hanging in my mind not unlike that September sultriness that […]

I am constantly doing this . Maybe you do it yourself. I relate my forefathers’ lives to events in  the world’s history and wonder what they were doing as these events unfolded. When I think about my parents and my grandparents and remember  them, or more likely try to remember parts of their lives that […]

THE BREAD SONG. (Materialism Blues). I wrote this song when I played in a group called “MUDSI MUNTU”. (MOODZI MOON TWO). These African words mean “Men of the Village”. You couldn’t call it work, really. We didn’t play anywhere. We just wrote and recorded songs (three albums worth),  using very simple equipment and multi-tracking to […]

Take a really good look around you the next time you go for a walk. How many flowers do you see blooming? When you walk through an estate of houses, how many of your neighbours grow a few flowers? How many wildflowers do you see at the side of the road?There’s a piece of common […]

I was talking about man’s capacity for and delight in killing, some time ago.People do not like to think about this but it is true nonetheless. We are a very curious creature in the sense that our innate curiosity has led us to many discoveries . It has made us become excellent toolmakers and masters […]

Well, here we are with summer slinking to a weary end. There wasn’t a lot to remember of this one really .It started well, looked as though it might be a classic like last year,  but fizzled to a  dead , damp conclusion with precious few warm, sunny days. On the streets they only got […]

    I wrote these words as far back as 2009. It was a hard thing to write and record. It took my emotions for a drive around dark corners and up to a place where tears could not help but come. It has taken me a long time to work out how to play it in […]