By Radical Rhymes This is for the doubters, the deniers and those people still refusing to take the Covid virus seriously… It started with a terrible aching on the right side of my face, and a strange tingling at the back of my tongue – the kind I recall from my childhood after eating that […]
Archive for the ‘COLUMNS BY RADICAL RHYMES’ Category
Rage…


By Radical Rhymes Stop the fighting and the grief, There’s something more in your belief. The drama and the pointless factions, They’ll leave you sore without retractions. Save your rage for something real, Injustice is a turning wheel.
Surprises…


By Radical Rhymes I saw something this week, a documentary about a lost musician of the 1970s, a genius, a man who should have been a worldwide phenomenon but who disappeared without a trace. Or at least that is the way it seemed. Searching for Sugar Man is the title. If you haven’t seen it, […]
The Wonders Of Art!


By Radical Rhymes I feel it necessary to just say something about how art influences me, affects me. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by colour and light that it’s like being stuck with a cattle prod. They hit me like a wall of sensations I fear will genuinely crush me. I love to stare at […]
Crete: An Evening to Remember


By Radical Rhymes When I was on the verge of turning twenty, I agreed – against my better judgement – to go on a ‘lad’s holiday’ with four of my friends. We were all part of the same cricket team and we’d just had a very successful season. For the third year in a row […]
Ringside Report Review of the Video Game Inside – Gaming News


By Radical Rhymes One of my secret pleasures is video gaming. I truly love video games, even though I was a late arrival to the hobby. My first real experience came through the generosity of a friend. I was a young lecturer just starting out in academia and had come across an external examiner who […]
The Gaze Of the Other…


By Radical Rhymes I remember reading, a long time ago, The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. I don’t recall it in great detail, it was for an assignment for an essay I was writing, or maybe it was even my final project, which was about freedom. What I do remember is the idea […]
Holes in My Saturdays


By Radical Rhymes Holes. Black holes. I’ve just finished a book by AG Riddle, a trilogy, which talks about the space time impact of black holes, amongst other things, and it opened a passageway, a vehicle for understanding. Not just about the workings of the universe (albeit a fictional work) but about my own life. […]
Where Were You?


By Radical Rhymes I wanted to reflect on those moments where people might ask you: ‘Where were you when?’ The focus will mainly be on political or world events, even though my life has largely been dominated by sporting occasions. It would be a bit dull, I figured, to recount a series of ‘I was […]
The Art of the Insult?


By Radical Rhymes I’ve been on Twitter for a little while now, and one of the things I’ve noticed is the careless, casual rudeness that can rear its ugly head. Complete strangers with no prior knowledge of the recipient will launch the most disgusting and uncalled for attacks, seemingly without a moment’s thought. I get […]
Wrestling the Inner Darkness!


By Radical Rhymes Wrestling. That’s how I would describe my inner existence. It’s a constant struggle against despair and self-destruction. And it’s a battle fought across minutes not hours or days or longer. The mood swings can be literally instantaneous. Following an upsurge of good feelings or even joy, the downswing can be immediate, violent, […]
Subjectivity and Art


By Radical Rhymes Too frequently I hear people say things like: ‘That’s not very good.’ Or, something far worse when confronted by a piece of art. This usually means that it doesn’t look exactly like it’s subject, or maybe it doesn’t resemble anything recognisable at all. But such judgements imply that there us an objective […]
Mirrors…


By Radical Rhymes We are surrounded by mirrors, aren’t we? Both literally and figuratively. We see reflections of ourselves everywhere. In books, movies, in the way people behave and interact around us. Sometimes it’s not so much an actual reflection, but an aspiration. An act that we wish we’d been responsible for, or a trait […]
Meanings


By Radical Rhymes I want to talk about meanings in this article and the plasticity of meanings. The way in which we CAN choose to alter or control meanings to make our lives better or perhaps merely more tolerable. I won’t be arguing that we have absolute control of this of course, because that would […]
First Impressions Aren’t Always Impressive


By Radical Rhymes I am not going to question centuries of common-sense knowledge and dismiss the importance of first impressions, but I do want to illustrate how misleading they can be. Of course, there are times when your first sense of another person is exactly right. I recall the first time I saw Donald Trump […]
The Meaning of Human Value


By Radical Rhymes What makes us valuable as people? From a societal perspective my feeling is that it’s our economic value, our productivity, what we can contribute. How else can we make sense of concepts like the ‘demographic time bomb’, where people living longer is a problem? For centuries we, as a species, have been […]
That Friend…


By Radical Rhymes We all have difficult friends, don’t we? They come in all shapes and sizes, as do the difficulties they present for us. Being an ex-academic the temptation is always to categorise, to create typologies. So, not to disappoint here’s an off-the-cuff beginning: • The socially unaware friend – that person who will […]
The Joy of Unexpected Treasures!


By Radical Rhymes I’ve fallen out of love with things, with aimlessly owning material things. Perhaps that’s too stark, maybe it’s just a cooling of relations. There are things that I still like or enjoy, it’s just that I don’t see having things as such an important life goal anymore. After watching the minimalism documentary, […]
Proserpine: A Multi-Layered Painting


By Radical Rhymes I have always been fascinated by Pre-Raphaelite art. The story of the secret brotherhood of English painters, poets and art critics who sought to turn art from the ‘grand tradition’ towards more natural settings, a greater focus on realism and building stronger connections between literature and art, was compelling to me. I […]
Dealing With Bipolar Disorder & Healthy Escapes in Coping Especially in the Days of COVID-19, Boris Johnson & Donald Trump!


By Radical Rhymes These past few weeks have been difficult for me. The dark side of the bipolar has been biting hard at my heels and the constant drip of bad news has taken its toll. Trump and his shameful and shameless shenanigans, Boris Johnson and his bumbling incompetence, the ongoing terror and trauma of […]
MAGA You Are Death Eaters and the Sith!


By Radical Rhymes Yesterday I put up a survey on Twitter asking people to nominate the character Trump best represents in the Tolkien universe, more specifically, Lord of the Rings. I gave them three set choices: Sauron Saruman The Mouth of Sauron My own preference was the Mouth of Sauron, largely because he is just […]
Under Siege!


By Radical Rhymes I was scrolling down my Twitter feed recently and I came across a discussion about feeling under siege. Two US citizens were discussing the possibility that if Trump loses in November, and I pray to the universe he will, would he leave quietly? Would there be pitched battles in the street? One […]
Harold Larwood – A Real Sporting Hero!


By Radical Rhymes When I was young, I admired fast bowlers. For the cricket uninitiated these are cricketers who are able to propel a cricket ball, 5.75 ounces of rock hard leather, at 90mph+ at a batter 22 yards away. The pace, the athleticism, the danger, it was as exciting for me then as […]
Character Dissection…


By Radical Rhymes One of my pet hates is the dissection of people, historical figures, with no understanding that they are, or were, human, and of their time. Now, this is not to say that we should ignore their flaws and mistakes, that would be foolish, but do we have to dissect everything until there’s […]
Cricket Commentary – The Fear of Silence!
By Radical Rhymes I’ve been watching the Indian Premier League over the past few weeks and one of the things I’ve noticed is the commentary. It is constant, unrelenting, it covers every single second of every game. If I didn’t know better, I would blame the twenty overs format. It lends itself to mania, a […]