I have recently shared on here details of my mental health crisis. It was one which, ostensibly, began sometime in 2023 but which had, in all likelihood, been present for decades. An inherent fault line. All that was needed was a trigger to set in motion a total collapse. My post 'The Raven' catalogues that …
BY THE TIME I entered my teens the 1970s were half way through, and my formative years coincided with what was probably the weirdest decade in human history. Pitched between the anti-establishment counter-culture and excesses of the 60s and the 'me, me, me' decade of yuppie decadence that was the Thatcherite 80s, the 1970s struggled …
The State-Sanctioned Murder of Derek Bentley ‘By killing, the evil killer rips a jagged hole in the fabric of society. The jagged hole makes everyone edgy. Edgy people respond with panic. What if the fabric rips some more? What if the next rip is closer to home? What if it rips up my street? My …
Embracing the Beauty of our Flaws WE ARE, all of us, flawed. Sometimes those flaws are visible—a scar, a disability, a noticeable quirk. Some remain hidden in the recesses of our minds and hearts—anxiety, past trauma, low self-esteem, or simply the crushing weight of perceived inadequacies. And yet, we live in a world that idealises …
‘The nation which first learns to plot the paths of air masses accurately and learns to control the time and place of precipitation will dominate the globe.’ General George C. Kenney, Commander of the US Strategic Air Command, in the 1940s. Project Cirrus, the first explicit, military rainmaking effort in the West soon followed. IT'S …
SOME FASCINATIONS begin in childhood and never let go. For me, one such allure was the silent menace of submarines—sleek, powerful vessels gliding unseen beneath the waves. In later years I found something similarly captivating on land: the commanding presence of smartly painted, intelligently-designed heavy lorries—powerful machines that appear as stunning and substantive as any …
One Purpose IIN MOMENTS OF uncertainty or spiritual searching, many of us turn to tools for guidance. For some, it may be a well-worn Bible, opened to a page with a verse that seems to speak directly to the heart of the moment. For others (myself included), this comes in the form of Oracle cards—beautiful …
My previous post - 'Warning! Contains Common Sense' - looked at the proliferation of superfluous safety signage on lorries using our road network. In this post I turn my attention to the roads themselves. TAKE A DRIVE along any UK motorway or A-road, and you’ll notice a growing trend: more signs. More warnings, more instructions, …
A FEW DAYS ago my wife and I had occasion to travel from our home in North Lincolnshire to Sheffield, a journey of just more than an hour. It was one which included the M180, M18 and M1 motorways, and typically for a weekday, we shared these roads with a great many heavy goods vehicles …
TWENTY YEARS AGO, on July 7th, 2005, a series of coordinated bombings struck London’s transport system during the morning rush hour, killing 52 people and injuring more than 700. Within hours, the public was told the attacks were carried out by four British-born Muslim men acting independently, radicalised by extremism and driven to murder. But …
RAVEN MOON 