I’ve just finished reading a really good modern novel, one of those books that are so good you feel regret at reaching the last page. The story is gripping, the writing is lively and insightful but, oh, the similes! Oh, those similes! You know, if you’re going to use a simile, or a metaphor, you need to spend a little time thinking about it. One of the many jarring phrases the writer used was ‘leaves crinkled underfoot like petticoats’. What? What? Petticoats? Maybe that writer has a crinkly petticoat in her life, but I haven’t, and I don’t have any image of one, so I pause and think about pet ..read more

Have you read The Song Of Solomon lately? I’ve just read it for the second time. I’m reading it alongside a commentary, but even without that additional guide it’s a wonderful, giddying, immersive feast of poetry and drama. Yesterday I didn’t take the dogs to our usual beach, but we went south a few miles and they were very happy snuffling around on new territory, smelling new smells, so I sat on a boulder and listened to an audio recording of The Song of Solomon (David Suchet). I recommend the experience! If you ever doubt that God loves you, or wonder how much God loves you, and just what Go ..read more

Did you see Elton John at Glastonbury? Wasn’t he grand? Grand and gold and old. But the verve of the man! The energy and the melody and the rhythm. And those hands skipping and gliding over the piano keys…. you couldn’t help but marvel and love him. And Guns ‘n’Roses, did you see them pouring with sweat, and why weren’t they all stretchered off into Intensive Care for rehydration? And then there was Paul McCartney and Gilbert O’Sullivan looking somehow noble and bravely frail, and Cat Stevens (OK, Yusuf) just about unrecognisable, a cross between Captain Birdseye and Colonel Sanders and… you ..read more

I collected a grandchild from the railway station today, and – hang on, that sounds odd and a bit predatory, I should add that it wasn’t just any old grandchild, it was one of my own grandchildren. So, don’t ring the police, just read on: Anyway, the station is about a half hour’s drive away and the road is a great one for someone who loves driving, because it seems to skim across the top of the world, just where the Earth meets the sky (yes, yes, I know the Earth always meets the sky but on this particular road it seems especially so). The sky this afternoon was majestic, the clouds towering ..read more

A friend who holidayed in Africa is on her way back home. Another is heading off, this very moment (probably) to Bermuda. On the beach today we spoke with a family heading back to the south of England, via the delightful M4 and the carpark we call the M25. So many people on the move, like herds of bison, or drops of water in a stream, moving, ever moving. I imagine that if we were floating above the Earth, able to see the travels of all these people, we would see a seething ant heap. Busy, busy, busy, jetting here on business and there on holiday, boats crossing the sea, students inter-railing ..read more

I mean, really, come on… zip it! Zip it when there is manufactured scandal of TV celebrities, zip it if you stumble across a witch hunt, zip it if you object to people who don’t share your prejudices or choices, zip it if you have some really clever and biting opinions about Meghan Markle, zip it if you take offence at the wrong pronoun, zip it if everyone you know is an idiot, zip it if you want to cancel an author or a speaker because you’re right and they’re wrong, zip it if you have strong opinions about clothes or jewellery or tattoos (or anything else that doesn’t matter a tuppenny damn ..read more

The Catholic Church had me until I was seven, and then for another few years. It was Aristotle who said ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.’ and many years later Ignatius of Loyola quoted it, and so it became a mantra of Roman Catholicism. But there’s some truth in it; what we learn as children, the attitudes we see around us, even the words we hear, they stay with us, even when we deliberately ditch them, shred them and put them out with the rubbish. As I did. Over and over again. But they had me for 16 years, 16 intense years, and I was an impressionable soul who ..read more

When you live in West Wales , and the sun is shining, even the shortest journey to the shops or the sea is beautiful. Look: Isn’t that glorious? Tomorrow I plunge back into the world of telly properly. Up to my eyes in it. For the last few months we’ve been developing a TV series, and then I wrote the first draft of the first episode, and it was all jolly nice and cosy and fun. Full of promise. But that’s the cosy bit over – today the dogs go into kennels, and tomorrow I get up early to drive to our first script meeting. Back in the saddle. The first script meeting is where the rubber hits ..read more

When I was a child there was a part of the Roman Catholic mass that I loved. It was the Kyrie Eleison. Those words were the only Greek used in the Latin Mass. Don’t ask me why, cos I don’t know. Today in the Coronation of Charles III, those words were sung in Welsh by the glorious fabulous Bryn Terfel, and it was still called The Kyrie Eleison. The version I loved as a youngster was Bach’s composition in his Mass in B Minor, and I just accepted that it was a Greek prayer in a Latin mass, composed by a German and loved by an Irish girl living in England. Confusing, innit? But listen, listen, li ..read more

London is filling up with ultra keen, extreme royalists, hundreds of whom are already sitting in their uncomfortable picnic chairs, lining the Mall and trying to keep warm. Some arrived on Tuesday, so by the time they get a fleeting glimpse of the royal coach through the grey drizzle, they will have been in situ for 4 days and nights. I was going to say ‘Only the British would be so daft’ but I’ve just seen a video clip of the King walking among the crowd and talking to people from America, Australia and Bangkok. Daftness is not, it seems, exclusive to Brits. My London pal walked down the Mall ..read more