Round the Herne

Happy New Year. Dear Readers (both of you), may 2017 bring you opportunities to shine, people who will truly value that light, lots to laugh about, ideas to inspire you, activities to fuel your passions, new things to learn, enough money to meet your needs and to treat others, moments to melt your heart and restore your faith, and come this time next year may you look back with pride. On a less positive note, 2017 is set to be a difficult year of world politics for many - so lets treat this as a challenge to deepen and (in some cases) create community to support those being ill-treated, to devise innovative ways to help people when assorted governments abandon their responsibilities to do so, and a time to think of new and practical ways for the world to run instead of just doing the same old shit century after century. Incidentally, I don't just mean people thousands of miles away whose suffering becomes picturesque by benefit of distance, but also the people who li

The longest night holds sway as we are once again halfway out of the darkness. I have been working on a Yuletide poem for several years, in dribs and drabs - usually adding a verse and then getting sidetracked and forgetting about it again for another year. I thought I would post it here as a work in progress, in the hope that it will help to keep it in focus for me and I might actually finish it! It's a narrative poem inspired by Russian folklore of Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) but with elements of Irish lore worked in, for no more sensible reason than that the story is flowing in that direction. Grandfather Frost “Sleep my son, sleep, on this darkest eve, Outside the White Maidens flakes do weave; Warps of ice, wefts of snow; Let silence flow, unto midnight cleave”. “Rest has flown, the night is far too deep Tell me a story to help me sleep - Yarns of frost, chords of rime To freeze time whilst nightmares outside creep.” Snow-heaped rafters c