Bard's life

On a recent trip to Brussels I visited the Musee des Beaux-Arts and saw Pieter Bruegel's Landscape with the Fal l of Icarus , a truly impressive p ainting by one of my favourite Old Masters.   The Icarus s tory is one we can all re late to : a tale of a young man whose ambition overrode his judgement. Which of us has not, at one  time or another , aimed impossibly high and consequently been brought crashing to earth when reality shone its fearsome rays on our ludicrous aspirations.  ICARUS I am falling from high but they do not notice. The air, through wings that promised much, keens like a mourner. Creeping ants below evolve to shepherd, ploughman, angler. I fall unseen. Someone will dream it later. I have no time to scream. The water is hard as stone.

I'm a great admirer of the work of Engl ish film director, the late David Lean, whose cinematic triumphs ranged from the wonderful low-budget classic, Hobson's Choice , to epics such as D octor Zhivag o and Lawrence of Arabia , the latter of which launched actor Peter O'Toole to stardom.   In 1945 Lean directed a film version of a Noel Cow a rd play , Still Life , a poignant love story about a couple who meet in a railway station : the sort of film that my mother's generation would have referred to as 'a weepie'. The film was ent i tled Brief Encounter. My story 's title is obviously a play on the film's name and is also about an encounter in a railway station but there the similarity ends, except, as a few film buffs may note, both my protagonist and the male lead in David Lean's film are named Harve y. Briefcase Encounter was recently placed third in the Guernsey Writers Flash Fiction competition.       BRIEFCASE ENCOUNTER Eurostar d...

In my seventy-fifth year, I regard each day as a gift and marvel that most of me is still in working order. A daily inventory of aches and pains tends to turn up something new every now and again but, to date, it's all been minor stuff, nothing sinister.  Granted the choice, which would you prefer to surrender first: body or brain?    IN GRACE The present is arcane and strange and any recollection left of what has happened in the past is vague and liable to change.         Of future plans, he is bereft,           for nothing now is hard and fast.   They give him multicoloured pens and paper, as one might a child. Familiar voices interweave. He sees, through a distorting lens, people who wept, people who smiled, that, one by one, stood up to leave. He is content. He lives in grace. What matter if the moments blur, if his nocturnal thoughts are grim? He has escaped himself: ...