Author Archives: Dick Jones

In the summer of 2002 Emma and I took an isolated house in a small inlet along Bertraghboy Bay between Cashel and Roundstone in Connemara. There was electricity and running water, albeit of a peaty brown, but no mobile phone … Continue reading →

MR MOORE’S WALL-CLOCK Mr Moore lived on his own in a lean-to shack (two-roomed and shingle-boarded) at the back of the barn where Grandad kept his car. Clad with roofing felt and thick with tar that bubbled in the sun, … Continue reading →

With age comes impermanence. It’s always there, of course, but back then it’s a football team’s trajectory of success, the potted plant that you want to make it past autumn, your child’s delight in things that are not of this … Continue reading →

‘A RED SUN SETS IN THE WEST’ During the three consecutive summers of 1990, ’91 and ’92 in company with students and fellow teachers from Frensham Heights School, I visited Russia at a time of extraordinary change. Although our visits were relatively … Continue reading →

50 years since the first moon landing. What of Michael Collins, who stayed on board Apollo 11..? MICHAEL COLLINS ORBITS THE MOON I am elected watchman. It’s my lot to turn and turn in my tiny cradle. Not my fortune … Continue reading →

HOLY WRIT They gave us God at infant school: some illustrated stories           and a picture on the wall –           that Jesus with a lantern lifted high. He’s looking for a … Continue reading →

THE WELL-MADE DOOR There’s much to be said for the well-made door. This one, smoked black by time, hangs like a heavyweight, shuffles through his quarter-turn singing deep of the long years, of a conspiracy once of oak and iron: … Continue reading →

As we move deeper into the 21st century there can be few across the span of generations whose lives have not been, or are not now, touched by that broad musical genre whose pan-cultural influence has been an integral part … Continue reading →

There was still something I could do: I could tell the world. Leslie L. Hardman, ‘The Survivors: The Story of the Belsen Remnant’. A couple of years ago, with my sons Lindsay (who lives and works in Germany) and Reuben … Continue reading →

MEDBOURNE 1. There never was a golden age of bucolic bliss in our green and pleasant land.  No black-iron range in a stone-flagged kitchen, no sides of cured ham and dried herbs hanging from the rafters, no hollyhocks and roses … Continue reading →