Wordstall

  • Beginnings and endings

    These few weeks in Florence are coming towards an end. Tomorrow we head south: one of the high speed trains for a couple of days staying with friends in Salerno (and visiting Napoli) and then a bus across to the Adriatic side to stay in Puglia for a further couple of days, staying with family(!)…

  • I Assist the Soapbox to Leak Away

    I Assist the Soapbox to Leak Away

    It is very hot on the pavements outside Parliament today, and getting hotter by the minute. I am with a crowd of Dignity in Dying folk, and wearing a “The more we diealog the more we live” T-shirt too. I am also holding a large plum coloured banner in my hand which is working quite…

  • Man on soapbox; washing on line

    There was mist on the mountain this morning, the air hardly moving, a slow drift of indistinctness through the pines. Nonetheless we were able to find the road and so continue the climb, discussing War and Peace and war and peace. News from down below was scarce but a text message was received which told…

  • Male Outlaw on Soapbox

    Male Outlaw on Soapbox

    Make full dis-closure, and reach the end of (the) matter. Drop the defences, and step over into everlasting life. What’s not to like – La-La? Besides, endings are such a pain as everyone in the death groups knows only too well. Better stop kicking up the dust shilly-shallying around this good death/bad death thing! It…

  • The end of matter

    The end of matter – the end of the/that matter. Back in the death groove I guess. There are possibilities: bites, soccer, politics, old men, eroticism. But what matter is being referred to? At least let’s hear it for Jose Mujica! Though the professional political class would think him way too human. I wish I…

  • The Disclosure Gesture

    The Disclosure Gesture

    So Uruguay are out and Luis Suarez has got a four month ban from FIFA which is the harshest punishment ever handed out in World Cup history. Uruguay President (79) Jose Mujica has called it a fascist ban by “a bunch of old sons of bitches”. The president was at a reception for the Uruguay…

  • Mind stolen! – Beware love!

    Well, I suppose one might cast around yet again and rebuild the sense of what life might be about, what it might be to be human, say, as against a rat. Human-ness, rat-ness. We’re in this together or you’re on your own. Competition or co-operation. Which end of the room do we shuffle off to?…

  • Love: Mine – long as Agnes steal!

    Love: Mine – long as Agnes steal!

    ‘Writing I believe is a sort of co-production’. In the continuing ficto-documentary spirit of this dialogic project of ours, I now also read and repeat : ‘If it is not fair, it is not Christian either’ (Alan Bennet LRB Vol 36 No 12 19th June 2014). To begin with: we are all are equal in…

  • once bitten twice shy?

    In a dream last night I was trying to get home on a train. From a doze I woke in panic to find the train stopped in a station but I wasn’t able to discern the name. The windows were grimy, perhaps it was dark, or perhaps my eyes hadn’t quite started functioning. I got…

  • How to make a monster

  • How One Mounts an Assault on C****?

    How One Mounts an Assault on C****?

    How did I mount my first assault on her? It is one of those curious questions I often get asked and fail to understand. I want to protest but given the way Agnes looks these days, and her terrible croaking voice, and raucous one-way talking on and on and constant complaints, and her bad habits…

  • I Insert My Little Finger

    I Insert My Little Finger

    The clash of her sparkling rings and painted nails: there is something indecent about us all as we grow older. I know she is a shocker with her flashy jewellery and clumpy ornaments, and bright hair tints and high colour make-up, but Agnes still has the way of drawing me in. Yes, let’s talk about…

Categories (2024) are:

  • ATELIER Work – about-creative-work (in all mediums: text-drawing-sounds-image etc)
  • CLIMATE Action – indications-and-contra-indications
  • DAWDLING – walking-pausing-to-wonder-wandering
  • IN Conversation – companionship-and-connections
  • LA Communita –participatory-collaborative-artivism
  • OTHER than Human – animate-and-inanimate-terrestrial-kin
  • PARANOID Readings – violence-and-fundamental-perversions
  • POLITICAL Readings – mobilisations-affect-polarisations
  • REPARATIVE Readings – inspiring-healing-restorative
  • SHADOW Readings – speculative-and-not-yet-visible-thinking
  • STYLE Readings – scales-and-familiarities
  • TONITE at the Coliseum – live-experiences-performance
  • YOGI (‘Not This-Not That’) – meditation-bhakti-consciousness


Different WORDSTALL Categories in the past supported the mainly experimental personal writing in posts. The previous list of Category headings was: Anti-gravity Surgery / Atelier / Catastrophe Games / Echo Effects / Exodus / Fundamental Perversions / Hitting the Potholes / Holy Fool-Hero / In Conversation / Old Men Traveling / On the Street / Out in the Wilderness / Over and Beyond / Tonite at the Coliseum. Some of these still persist or recur as Tag key-words.

The even earlier Category headings for the walkingtalkingwriting blog (2006-2012) have been forgotten, but can be explored if desired via the long tail of monthly posts for those years here.