Jim Webster's Blog, page 64

Graveyards and even darker ghosts.

Dark shapes stalking graveyards, broken grave-slabs, fresh dirt on the short grass, the hint of some strange scent that lingers briefly but disappears even as you think to recognise it. The lovecraftian vision of the graveyard would hold only one surprise for the rural churchwarden, the short grass. I suppose much horror was written in …

Road trip

I escaped. I slipped out of the house and left the computer sitting there chained to the desk. I had five days without email, social media or anything, linked to the world by an elderly mobile phone whose number no-one knows and which can barely cope with text. Ok it was more of a rail …

Worth a free hot dog.

Sunday evening was a good evening. I went to Costa in Barrow where first Sunday of every month they have started running a live music night. It’s sort of organised by St Mark’s church in Barrow, and for five minutes at half time, Ian, the vicar there, will say something. Not a sermon, barely a …

Me, I change the light bulbs.

There are certain jobs that shouldn’t fall to an honest churchwarden. Trust me in this. Churchwardens do fixtures and fittings, perhaps even a bit on the personnel side, but pontificating on the eternal verities is way above our pay grade. But you know what it’s like. When the midden hits the windmill, you’re the man …

Shock scientific survey shows that people prefer salacious stories about sexual misconduct to quality literature or hard news.

First, dear reader; let us be clear in one thing. When discussing the crude desires of hoi polloi, it is taken as read that your own interests are infinitely more cultured. I take it for granted that you don’t follow this blog for titillation or amatory misfeasance but instead seek to become attuned to my …

Smarter than the average sheep. (And also quite bright for a Londoner as well)

Sheep aren’t the most stupid of God’s creatures; they’re not even the most stupid mammal. Indeed Horses could well have been created to allow sheep to feel the smug glow of intellectual superiority that everyone needs from time to time. Not that this is high praise, there’s single celled creatures floating in seas of freezing …

Was it love or just wind?

It’s an interesting thing to have on your CV. If I lie on my stomach in the muck, my arms are just long enough to reach into the icy ‘water’ and pass a rope under the chest of a black limi heifer who has managed to get herself into a slurry pit. It’s one of …

It must be spring, this evening I was nice to a poet.

Well it’s about time. I mean by that it’s about time that it was spring. (I don’t think being nice to poets ought to be seasonal, it lures them into complacency). People were beginning to wonder whether it was going to show up at all, or whether we were going to do what we did …

The death of Margaret Thatcher has been reported

So I’m getting my retaliation in first. Any moment the web is going to be filled with happy munchkins dancing round singing ‘Ding dong the witch is dead’. In fact there is even a Youtube video with the comment “Thumb up if you landed here after discovering Thatcher died” People who’ve achieved nothing and are …

Easter People?

Someone once told me if I had something to say, Blog it. I suppose it’s more pithy than telling me to drop it down into an abyss of forgotten electrons where it’ll sink without trace until it comes to rest far from sight or memory. But you know this winter we’ve been having? I mean …