Is there anyone out there? Or to be more specific, is there anyone out there who, like me, was once part of a busy, noisy, thriving family, tangled up in all its inevitable joys and woes, and who now suddenly finds themselves alone? If you are out there, then you’ll understand how I feel as [...]
I wonder how many of us ever get our lives right first time round? And I wonder if there only ever is a first time round. But that’s a deep spiritual question which I don’t want to get into. Most of us have enough things on our plates without worrying about whether or not this [...]
This summer holiday I binged on books. I just read and read and read. And then read some more. Bingeing and gluttonising and craving for more and more and more – a heavenly addiction like an opiate of the gods. I could almost go so far as to say that reading is the cure for [...]
I was wondering whether to put ‘Cultural Differences’ instead of ‘Koreans’ in my title. Could ‘Koreans’ somehow sound a bit … I don’t know … politically incorrect, I wondered. Especially since the word is followed by ‘autism’ and ‘isolation’, neither of which has positive associations. But no, I decided to stick to ‘Koreans’. After all, [...]
It’s Sunday again, blogging day; the summer vacation is almost as over – or will be by midnight tonight – and I’ve found myself thinking, Hmm. What have I done this long hot sultry summer? In terms of targets, what have I achieved? (What have you achieved?) What grade would I get for Not Having [...]
The summer holidays are drawing to a close. A pretty banal statement, you might think? Not if you work in the field of education, as I do, or if you’re still in the process of being educated - which we all were, once upon a time, right? That is, unless you happened to be brought [...]
I had my first child and my first puppy in close proximity of each other. The puppy was a female mongrel of eight weeks, the child a female toddler of sixteen months. And the novel I was working on at the time was about twelve months old. That is, I’d been writing it for the [...]
