Oh dear I’m feeling unwell Mary said to her friend Annie as they drank coffee after breakfast.

It’s January when everybody begins to feel unwell even before they catch flu

Annie I don’t know why you make wild generalisations like that.

You are taking it too seriously. When I look at my bank statement ot my credit card bill and look out of the window to see the heavy pouring rain I could say I feel slightly ill but in a metaphorical sense.

My goodness Annie whatever has happened to you? You sound very intelligent Have you been taking an open university course without telling me!?

Yes I’ve been taking great books of Russia and I really like Tolstoy very much.

You sound like a different person completely almost as if you were turning into me!

I hope not because I don’t like your dress sense nor your lack of makeup and perfume. And don’t think that you can turn into me just by wearing makeup because it took me a lifetime to become who I am.

Well I’ve been reading about projection the psychological type of projection and something that you don’t like in yourself you can project it into your friend and then you see it in her and she gets blamed for it all gets criticized for it and you feel totally innocent and wonderful

Blimey if we are both going to be very intelligent and literate it’s going to sound like something off that Melvyn Bragg programme In our time.

That’s an exaggeration.

Well Mary are you going to call the doctor?

Why would I want to call the doctor?

You said you were feeling ill.

I do feel ill with I’m not sure why I don’t have a cough or a cold I have no pain in my chest but i seem to be going to the toilet a lot . It might be the coffee.

No I don’t think that’s the coffee I think you’ve got one of your infections. You keep crying and you see a little bit confused about your appointments it’s in your brain rmmm. How can an infection in the bladder be in the brain?

Oh it’s all to do with inflammation . Mary was amazed at her friend’s observations

Honey are you sure that you are Annie?

Of course I am Annie why ask the cat he will tell you.

Emile looked at them with one eye open and one closed

Yes it is Annie  alright

She is not any more intelligent it’s just that you are more stupid then you used to be..

Emile you are a very wicked cat why have you got no tact and courtesy?

Well you have often told me Mary that in an academic discussion it’s  only truth that matters.

Well you sound like the Pope to me. But ut you’re not infallible 

Now even the cat sounds more intelligent

What is the secret to this increase in the IQ and the general intelligence of everybody in the room?

Even when Mary is ill she is still very intelligent but not as much as she would be when she was well because without energy the brain cannot work abd the heart cannot work to feel the feelings that we need to combine with our thoughts before we can come to a conclusion about anything

Yes as someone once said

Energy is eternal delight

I think it was a poet William Blake who uttered this beautiful sentence many years ago but it is still true today.

And so say all of us

I am doing research into which place people watch TV, the young man at the door told Mary
I rarely watch TV, Mary informed him politely
First please tell me your name and ethnic group .he asked her.We must follow the rules ,if not the rulers. he muttered
My name is Danish so I am a Viking, she told him proudly
OK, that makes you English, he said deftly filling his form
You might as well say that the Romans’ descendents are English, she said in her mellifluous voice
After 2,000 years I think they qualify, he joked
Some were black
I don’t care if they are purple, he said courteously.At some point those born here are English.
What we mean is that there is no such thing as being English,Mary said academically
So true, the poor man John whispered.I am a Celt.Not a cult. You seem a very nice lady.Would you like to go to McDonald’s with me? We could carry on chatting
Do you mean come?
Come or go, give me an answer.do
I know it’s not where you usually go but I don’t earn much.
Yes,I’ll meet you at the bus stop at 5 pm, she answered.I don’t have a car
Neither do I, said John.
I like this bus.The people on it are really friendly
Mary shut the door and wondered what to wear
Annie appeared and tapped on her window with hermanicured hands
You are just who I need,Mary cried with joy.
She explained her problem and her date
I think jeans and a nice anorak with a scarf that makes you look grotesque
Will John like that?
It’s the fashion,Annie said pertly.I am amazed you are going out with that man.You don’t
know who he is.He might be a murderer.
I doubt if a psychopath would take me for a burger… more likely a posh restaurant
Good point, said Annie brightly
Let’s look at my scarves,Mary said.How about this zebra print?
I like this blue one with books printed on it,said Annie
I could wear both of them!~
You could start a trend, her dear neighbour told her
Meanwhile Emile was having a panic attack in the kitchen
Don’t panic,Emile said Mary.We can’t linger in McDonalds
The seats are small and close together
Tell me, which scarf do you prefer?
I like that one with cat’s eyes on it.Wear that and he will know you have a protector.
Honestly, it’s too much bother to decide.If only women had fur like cats,Mary said
What about shoes? called Annie
I’ll wear the green trainers and red socks
You will be a sight for sore eyes if you add some makeup
On hearing this, Mary screamed hysterically.
I think I’ll stay at home

And so will all of us

Your face is etched upon my heart.

I knew you in the morning light

Love is wise but never smart.

We have no need of others charts

In the mornings and the night

Your face is etched upon my heart.

As we waken sleep departs

To see your face is my delight

Love is wise and sometimes smart

Intuition, craft is art

Love is silent, hatred fights

Your face is etched upon my heart

Human Love can see in part

Face to face we’ll see aright

Love is wise love is not smart

Your face is etched upon my heart.

Love is wise but never smart

Is love blind? Who etched the lines?

Sacred, human, love is kind

Samuel Taylor Coleridge | The Poetry Foundation https://share.google/MHmBJ4Z7dnojraKAV

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the premier poet-critic of modern English tradition, distinguished for the scope and influence of his thinking about literature as much as for his innovative verse. Active in the wake of the French Revolution as a dissenting pamphleteer and lay preacher, he inspired a brilliant generation of writers and attracted the patronage of progressive men of the rising middle class. As William Wordsworth’s collaborator and constant companion in the formative period of their careers as poets, Coleridge participated in the sea change in English verse associated with Lyrical Ballads (1798). His poems of this period, speculative, meditative, and strangely oracular, put off early readers but survived the doubts of Wordsworth and Robert Southey to become recognized classics of the romantic idiom.

Coleridge renounced poetic vocation in his thirtieth year and set out to define and defend the art as a practicing critic.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-milton

the volume were composed in Stuart England but published after the onset of the English Civil War. Furthermore, Milton may have begun to compose one or more of his mature works—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes—in the 1640s, but they were completed and revised much later and not published until after the Restoration.

This literary genius whose fame and influence are second to none, and on whose life and works more commentary is written than on any author except Shakespeare, was born at 6:30 in the morning on 9 December 1608. His parents were John Milton , Sr., and Sara Jeffrey Milton , and the place of birth was the family home, marked with the sign of the spread eagle, on Bread Street, London. Three days later, at the parish church of All Hallows, also on Bread Street, he was baptized into the Protestant faith of the Church of England. Other children of John and Sara who survived infancy included Anne, their oldest child, and Christopher, seven years younger than John. At least three others died shortly after birth, in infancy or in early childhood. Edward Phillips, Anne’s son by her first husband, was tutored by Milton and later wrote a biography of his renowned uncle, which was published in Milton’s Letters of State (1694). Christopher, in contrast to his older brother on all counts, became a Roman Catholic, a Royalist, and a lawyer.

Milton’s father was born in 1562 in Oxfordshire; his father, Richard, was a Catholic who decried the Reformation. When John Milton, Sr., expressed sympathy for what his father viewed as Protestant heresy, their disagreements resulted in the son’s disinheritance. He left home and traveled to London, where he became a scrivener and a professional composer responsible for more than twenty musical pieces. As a scrivener he performed services comparable to a present-day attorney’s assistant, law stationer, and notary. Among the documents that a scrivener executed were wills, leases, deeds, and marriage agreements. Through such endeavors and by his practice of money lending, the elder Milton accumulated a handsome estate, which enabled him to provide a splendid formal education for his son John and to maintain him during several years of private study. In “Ad Patrem” (To His Father), a Latin poem composed probably in 1637-1638, Milton celebrated his “revered father.” He compares his father’s talent at musical composition, harmonizing sounds to numbers and modulating the voices of singers, to his own dedication to the muses and to his developing artistry as a poet. The father’s “generosities” and “kindnesses” enabled the young man to study Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and Italian.”

Little is known of Sara Jeffrey, but in Pro Propulo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (The Second Defense of the People of England, 1654) Milton refers to the “esteem” in which his mother was held and to her reputation for almsgiving in their neighborhood. John Aubrey, in biographical notes made in 1681

Happiness is compulsory at this time
Xmas parties,alcohol and drugs
Inebriated,I can never rhyme
I sit and watch the mating of the slugs

But surely nothing mates in winter cold
For slugs don’t own a coat like humans do
Perhaps ,despite appearance, they are bold
Need no injections to prevent the flu.

On balance would you rather be a slug
That lives a life of freedom in the grass
Or do you live because you write and blog
And in the evening play a double bass.?

A slug can’t sing a song nor speak kind words
This idea is foolish and absurd.

Mary went to the hospital to see the rheumatologist

The entire hospital had been re-built and half the site was full of so called “Executive Homes”

Mary and Annie took a cab as it was raining hard.Although Mary was wearing her new green raincoat, she did not like to get it wet. .

Where did you buy your mac,Annie enquired jauntily? Cotton Traders,.

Mary admitted nervously.

It looked lighter than it is and Stan liked me in green You already have two trenchoats and a nylon mac,Annie told her.

And Stan is no longer here What’s it to you?Do you want me to give all my money to the poor?

Well, some of it,Annie responded anxiously.

You need to pay your utilities. My utilities!That sounds like something sexual that cannot be openly named,Mary cried You are confusing it with urethra, Annie laughed What is my ethra? whispered Mary No, the urethra is a little tube for the bladder to empty itself through Isn’t the human body amazing? Mary acknowledged using a cliche for better effect Definitely, said Annie and I love wearing beautiful clothes like velvet Where do we draw the line though, between looking good and giving money to the poor, tortured or victimised,Mary pondered

It is hard now because we can see what the rich have and we want it.Annie shouted calmly

Or in your case you can see all those philosophy books on Amazon and buy them with one click she continued. Mary could see in her mind’s eye her living room piled high with books but if she were rich like Michael Frayn she could have a huge house full of shelves and desks. Adam Phillips,’ room looked more full than Mary’s and he must want it like that

In the waiting room Mary looked at Wittgenstein’s biography by Ray Monk on her kindle while Annie read The Sun. Soon Mary was called in 

Hello, said Doctor Morse.

How are you?

In the pink , she cried shyly.

I don’t understand that, he said in his kindly way It’s an old English saying.It means I feel fine, but I don’t really that’s why I am here He looked at her left hand. and said there was no cartilege between the the thumb and wrist.

Where has it gone,Mary asked but he remained silent Then he said,I think steroid injections will help.Would you turn your chair round by 180 degrees so you can put your arm on my desk? Mary turned round and felt a bit dizzy It’s hard getting older isn’t it, the doctor said in a tone rather artificially kind like a bad actor on stage and afraid of forgetting his lines or forgetting whether he was in King Lear or a Comedy Mary burst out laughing to her surprise. .You are a weird person, the  consultant told her thoughtfully with his glowing eyes shining like the sun over Lake Windermere in a heatwave by

Well, we can’t all be exactly the same ,she told him foolishly Then she had to turn her chair round again. despite her poor hands

Why don’t you have swivelling chairs ,she asked pointedly They won’t give me enough money, the doctor said even though I am a Consultant and I have published lots of papers Can’t you buy a second hand chair? Mary wondered politely No, it has to pass Health and Safety,Dr Morse whispered cautiously yet angrily.

I see.

Well don’t blame it all on the EU. I love the EU, he told her.I hope Brexit fails Me too she croaked sweetly They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes until his next patient arrived I will see you in September, he told her optimistically his smile making her giggle inside so her body shivered with suppressed laughter not fear Miaow, cried Emile from Mary’s designer handbag What in G-d’s name is that, the doctor asked nervously Don’t worry, doctor.I forgot to leave Emile in the Waiting Room Emile stuck out his head and smiled at Dr Morse Good morning, he said graciously.Is Dave the paramedic here? No, they are not here they have their own Ambulance Station down the road Emile began to sob as he liked to get his own way by any means possible.Why, he was almost human Mary apologised as she shook hands with the doctor. Thank you for helping me, she murmured.I feel better already And so say all of us

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/15/state-of-world-today-1980s-2020s-britain-history?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

One of the most important is that it is better to cooperate on things on which you can agree than to focus on the things that divide you. Historically, this is a huge lesson. What might have happened in Germany if the 1930s communist movement had tried to work with the social democrats and liberals against the fascists? Instead they perished in the canps

From mary.tandem@gmail.con Hi Stan I have told you already all about what I’ve been up to at this Conference on Irregular Numbers,I thought you might like this article on Structuralism I attach to the email along with a photo of Wittgenstein in bed eating a meringue with a cake fork justlike ours Love,Mary [your wife] From stan.tandem@ymail.comb How delightful to know you are thinking of me today and thank you for taking the time to write when you are busy.I am also busy now with the baking but I shall put the doc somewhere safe and take a look later; however,as I have said before,Structuralism is not something that I have found interesting.. it may even be a very bad, destructive development of modern thinking.Since I value your judgement I shall at least read the beginning in case it is presented in a better form than I have seen before…. I care for you,love you.So despite my prejudice I shall not ignore your offering if only to keep you happy Oh,For God’s sake,let’s top this stupid game and be honest It’s just rubbish…and I wonder why you bother with it.Still we can’t all be geniuses so I suppose I ought to be more patient with you as you have such a sweet smile and singularly lovely eyes and will do anything I want, more or less, except sending me photos of yourself in silk lingerie lying on a bed holding a rose between your teeth I am sick of intellectual discussions and wish only to kiss your hands and your lips and then fall gently into a big bed with silk sheets Who did you say you were?Your tone sounds over familiar… don’t say you are my wife!I thought I’d got lucky for once irately yours ,Stan and Emile [he can swim now]

Hannah Arendt, an émigré from Nazi Germany.
“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth,” Arendt wrote in her classic volume The Origins of Totalitarianism, “is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/1018466/posts/2628020068

“As much as we might admire what is fresh and innovative, we all learn by imitating patterns,” writes Irina Dumitrescu in The Times Literary Supplement. “To be called ‘formulaic’ is no compliment, but whenever people express themselves or take action in the world, they rely on familiar formulas.” It’s true. For her review-essay, Dumitrescu reads 5 books about writing and explores how writing advice is caught in a paradox: to get people to communicate clearly, logically, and find their own voices, instruction must first teach them rules and provide enough room to learn by copying. This is why most of us writers begin by imitating established writers. We find someone whose style or subject reflects our own – someone in whom we hear our ideal selves, someone who sounds like we want to sound one day – and we mimic them. This could start with a parent, move to a cool friend, then end with a famous novelist or memoirst, before we emerge from the pupae of literary infancy. In other words, to facilitate originality, we must teach formula, encourage imitation, and push for eventual independence. She explores the value of craft, structure, exploration, and formula, and the way sticking to rules erodes a writer’s style, their character, even the essence of the art. She contrasts John Warner’s book Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities with the book Writing to Persuade, by The New York Times‘ previous op-ed editor, Trish Hall.

Click the link at the top

https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/relearning-how-to-walk-requires-physical-and-mental-strength#:~:text=All%20of%20this%20is%20monitored,have%20a%20steep%20learning%20curve.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/10/two-thirds-of-uk-voters-wrongly-think-immigration-is-rising-poll-finds?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ursula-k-le-guin

O

Leaves

BY URSULA K. LE GUIN

Years do odd things to identity.

What does it mean to say

I am that child in the photograph

at Kishamish in 1935?

Might as well say I am the shadow

of a leaf of the acacia tree

felled seventy years ago

moving on the page the child reads.

Might as well say I am the words she read

or the words I wrote in other years,

flicker of shade and sunlight

as the wind moves through the leaves.

There always were many places where you were not.

Now there are more.

But in the places where you were not

I knew that you were somewhere.

But now you are nowhere except in our minds.

And the world seems more empty to me

Without the familiar the beloved the long known

The whole world seems empty of you.

But maybe in the walled garden

I could catch you near the azaleas

Hear you singing in the distance

See your long slender body run to hide from me

But would I see your face?

Why have you abandoned me?

Why do you run from me and hi behind these old walls,?

Yes you are not here but I sense you from the corner of my eye I see you moving away running..

You’re a child again playing with me.

I almost hear you laugh now you are free of all your burdens and the pain.Ii may be happy for you leaving you in the world garden with the old bricks in the wall and the benches by the rosebed.

I see a shimmering light maybe it’s migraine

But I think it might be you teasing me.

Now the world is empty of you yet I’m still here.

You should be there or there or there but you are not.

You have gone

Low sun shines
Glistening holly leaves,ah
A wood pigeon passes

All the trees shiver
And the ends of shrubs waving
Makes me think,goodbye

Leaves like littls stars
Bare wood like burnt sienna
With its glowing orange tinge

Why are shadows long?
The sun blinds me in winter
Then it creates a moving image

Indifferent sun
Knows not of Middle East hell
But God remembers, suffers.

Criminal Jesu.
God descended to this world
He dies with victims

Why the torture
Fighting inevitable~But why such sadism?

Weep as the trees lean.
Sparrows shudder, remain.
Life is here again

Bewildered by our contradicting aims

Hurt by lawless, lasting grief and pani

The image of the refugee disdained

Shows again the face within his face;

And yet he too is human in embrace Bewildered by our contradicting aims; Obey our Christ or keep our wealth to arm

We too are nervous when we read

The lies of men whom we have picked to lead 

Who has got the courage of true gaze

To see the truth and like the Christ be flayed? 

Who will risk rejection by the mass? 

Far better to avert our eyes and pass. 

No one is an island, John Donne says 

The bell that tolls informs and shows our way.

When he went away
He said,”Lehitraot,mama.”
Do vstrechi.
He died, but I’m still here
Yes,in my heart I feel his love.
But why did I live,
And he did not?
Auf wiedersehen
Lehitraot.
Yes,darling,I’ll see you later
,When the sky turns black and all the stars blaze bright
I’ll see you shining in the night.
I’ll see you in my dreams alas.
Do vstrechi.
But why you and not me too?
Araka
I can’t understand
.Lehitraot,beloved.
A plus tard
Some where in this world,you fell
But no-one,not even God, can tell.
God was absent then or in some other place
He’s gone again
.They said He’s died too
,But He didn’t have a mother like you.
Do vstrechi.
My breasts ache and my heart and soul,
My breasts were made to make you whole.
To feed, give love and to console.
A plus tard
And now they ache with grief as my tears fall
.A bientot
My body trembles in the night
As dreams may bring my lost ones to my sight.
A plus
I’d walk across the roughest bleak terrain
If l I could find my loves and hold your hands again.
Do vstrechi
.The bell rings on the ancient clock
As time goes on as normal,  never stops.
Araka
I wish the hands of time could be reversed,
And I was not living with this curse.
People forget that I once had a son.
They think my grieving has been done.
Araka.But grief and loss and pain will never end
Until the curtain of my death descends
Auf wiedersehen.
Meantime I look at flowers and birds and trees
,But it’s really you my deepening insight sees.
Lehitraot.
The inscape of my heart is shown to few.
An artist of the lost would know this view.
I know I want to see just you.
Do vstrechi.
But for me there is noAuf wiedersehen
Never again will you say
What you said that day
Lehitraot,Mama.Papa
A plus tard
Tot ziens.
See you later
See you ,darling
See you soon

How can it be that he is never here?
How can it be I do not hear that voice
His presence haunts from his old ,battered chair

Though I have money and no need unbare
I feel the grief , the affect of his choice.
How can it be that he is never here?

What is the world when loss turns to despair.
When every sheet by weeping is made moist?
His presence haunts from his beloved chair

Now we learn the symbol of the hare
Unpeaceful, hunted, jugged or potted roast
How can it be that he was ever here?

Into the real we stand and long time stare
We’re begging, blaming,badgered and then gassed
His presence feints with ours in death’s own lairs

Now the world of man has long surpassed
The time we could blame God for what we‘ve missed
How can it be that He is never here?
His absence haunts , symbolic , suffered, real

There was a young lady in Ealing.

Who slept upside down on the ceiling

She said, if I fall out 

I’ll get quite a clout

In the meantime the floor has been healing.

Does gravity not affect women?

And that is just the beginning

Their verses don’t rhyme

Their clocks have no chimes

And that is the least of their sinning.

For no mother is perfectly good

None ever do all they could

We’ve all known the pain

And given them the blame.

Then there’s war and the shedding of blood.

Why do we all want more stuff ?

I am speaking now quite off the cuff.

To Greenland we will go to live in the snow.

For sure, we’ve never had it so rough

https://writingexplained.org/oriented-vs-orientated-difference

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/dannie-abse

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/learning/word-of-the-day-didactic.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/05/poem-of-the-week-renegade-by-lionel-johnson

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jan/07/art-could-save-your-life-creative-ways-make-2026-happier-healthier?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Annie the nubile,sexy and colour fancying neighbour has persuaded Mary that as Stan has run away shem should find someone else.Mary is doubtful
First of all,Annie cried,you need some new shoes.No man will be charmed by those chunky comfy flatties.Nor do your socks show sophistication
She herself wore a pink tweed suit and some high heeled boots in purple patent leather.
Well,Mary,answered,I thought I should be myself because a man might be annoyed being tricked like that.I believe in honesty.
That’s their problem said Annie rudely.
Well.where do I get the sort of socks a man would like,if indeed all men are the same in that way?I’d stick with silky black ones,said Annie kindly.Then some smart black pumps.
But if I look at Soul-mates online the men will not know what shoes I have got on.
That’s true,said Annie.At least until you meet one.
Anyway if it is called Soul-mates,why does my body matte
Don’t be so literal,dear.You know it’s just a way of indicating they want a lover.
Well.in that case it’s my lingerie that matters.
See here,said Annie bossily.With those shoes and socks nobody will want to see your lingerie.
Just as well said Mary.I don’t have any.
Are you telling me you have no underwear on,Mary whispered Annie cried franticaly
I am wearing some woollen vests and underpants I got for Stan,Mary said shyly
People might think you are a transvestite,pardon the pun re vesI have heard of transcendence but not transgender,Mary admitted ruefully.I
did used to have a purple bra, she continued nervously.Anyway, what about my job?
Don’t put anything about maths on the form.They hate clever women.
Surely they are not all the same,Mary answered.
Mary Archer is very clever.And Jeffrey is very rich.
You can’t generalise from one example ,Annie informed her academically

How about my love of Wittgenstein,shall I allude to that?
If you wear men’s woollen underwear and love a dead gay philosopher it will cut down the pool of men available,one might guess,Annie shouted.

I don’t think I’ll bother,Mary whispered.I’d rather have a cup of tea.Or maybe I’ll enter a convent and never come out again
.
So Annie put the kettle on and they did the Times Crossword from November 12 th 1956.Eventually they will crack it.Or die trying.

How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives.’

Annie Dillard