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The Peasants Are Evolving
It’s a romantic idea for many people who decide to move to the Alpujarras: buy a plot of land, perhaps fix up a ruin, maybe even get some livestock, put in some solar panels, and grow your own veg. If...
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The Hate Crowd
Hit in the stomach by a visual feed of hate comments – directed at others, but so what? It still hits like a bad virus, bilious in its fury, toxic in its loathing – I am shaken up by the decision that...
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The Tiger and the Radio
A tiger stalks the cemetery. He sniffs the stones, orange lichen encroaching like ripples in water that do not disappear but marl the granite in a vivid quilt of living-on. A radio buzzes in a distant...
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The Shrinking of the Lens
I used to open a door and the square would dissolve behind me as I went through it, the earth’s embrace splaying out in greeting above and around, a panorama complete with nicotina and straw, jasmine...
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Cactus, Retract Your Spines!
Cactus, retract your spines! You’ve spent too long invindictive mode, armssprouting in violent clustersreaching out in stopsign yoga pose. Now It’s time for union, spiky one. The outer must befriend...
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The Whirler
At dawnif you creep upquite close to my brainyou will hear all sorts of snorts and grumblingsas a motley crew of workersare creaking out of bedgetting the show readyfor the world if it wants it....
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To Be A Desert In A Monsoon
Summer in the Alpujarras is all about water. Neighbours have been known to break out into fistfights over whose turn it is to use the acequia, the snowmelt that gushes down from the mountains through...
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The Insanity of Blame
The life sentences of Farzana and Iftikar Ahmed for the murder of their daughter Shafilea, reported today on the BBC, because her ‘westernised ways’ (i.e. resistance to a forced marriage in Pakistan)...
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Sieving Metaphors out of Concrete: the Battle between One and All
I’m still bothered about this Shafelia Ahmed killing. After 4 hours sleep I’m already buzzing. There is something huge that needs to be said about it, so if you don’t mind me burbling on, here goes....
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Is She Dreaming? Or Is She Dying?
It’s been a pretty intense time on the El Cura ranch. The heat of August soared to 46 degrees centigrade (that’s 115 Fahrenheit to alla y’all), and while some of us were metaphysically dying in the...
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Creativity and the Dervish
I’ve been quiet lately on this blog, in fact ever since being Freshly Pressed (rather a nice feeling, a bit like being squashed through a mangle – perhaps this explains my new juicing craze). But it’s...
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The Danger of School Bell*
School is big in our minds at the moment, and it seems that it is not far from the news either. This week, two news stories have thrown up a curious question for me. First, there’s been 14 year old...
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Here is the News (That Never Happened)
Oh, the peculiar fears I carry around with me. A black and green dirty rucksack, for example, deposited on the floor by an empty table where I sit to have my coffee that gets me thinking: who does it...
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The World, Retranslated
Lately, I have been feeling an unusual pang of envy towards men. It’s not penis envy. You can get one of those quite easily on eBay these days, and in any case I rather like sitting down to pee – it is...
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“Hello, Armageddon/New Age of Abundance!*” *Delete as appropriate
It’s been an emotional week. Possibly something to do with rushing to hospital with Caveboy, who turned out not to be having ecstatic hallucinatory fevers for fun, but because he had pneumonia. Or...
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2012 in review
Flamin’ Nora…what a year! From dying sheep to the dawn of new love, 2012 has been a wild ride for me, one which thankfully involved no Armageddons, zombie apocalypses or Taliban invasions of the...
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No Jewels
I want no jewelstrembling in their earthy veilsbeneath my feet, awaitingcold metal handsslicing at the lifeenfolding themiron teeth chatteringcaterpillar tongues lickerishvacant reservoirs...
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The Elephant Sisterhood
A strange erosion seems to be happening in the togetherness of humankind. I cannot tell you how many women I know who, over the last few years, have seen their relationships with their children’s...
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The Heavy Fog Dreaming
I’ve finally got round to reading Bruce Chatwin’s ‘The Songlines’, a recollection of his wandering through Australia and encountering nude snorkelling Irish priests, sunburnt survivalists with dodgy...
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The Crowd
Cast out from lamps of tinkering mindsshadow beings with leathery hidesare shuffling round, pressing buttocksagainst unsuspecting skulls.Green pearly feathers ticklehorns catch on chandeliers...
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