Fergus Armstrong Here’s Mr Pip, aged parent”, said Wemmick, and I wish you could hear his name. Nod away at him Mr Pip, that’s what he likes. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations Dickens’s Aged Parent, or ‘the AP’, looks contented as he pokes his fire. Most of us locked-down septuagenarians, I suspect, are restless to … Read more
A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock. Charles Lamb In 1954, when I was aged nine, my youthful uncle, aged twenty-five, returned to Ireland from … Read more
Perhaps we can agree on this much: conflict is intrinsic to the human condition. We are desiring creatures. Our needs and wants rub up against those of others. Add in an event of intensification: a road accident, a perceived act of negligence, breach of commitment or betrayal of trust. Then there arises anger and its … Read more