Pompeii Floor 4

Pompeii Floor 3

Pompeii Floor 2

Pompeii Floor 1

Living Cliché

Recently I looked in mirror and could see that I am starting to age. As I stared I thought about how quickly the last ten years have gone by, and how quickly the next would disappear. Realising how short life is, I thought to myself, "Why am I living my life in a way that I don't want to?" As if this thought wasn't depressing enough, I then thought, "I am full of clichés." That really made me feel bad.

(But perhaps clichés are the only thing that can be thought whilst looking in the mirror.)

Sign of the Times

A problem of the current times is that people believe that they can turn their hand to anything. The critic is a critic in the very broadest sense, moving from one thing to another with an ease that leaves one gasping. But the truth is that these people are not interpreters: they move with such ease because their hand merely polishes the surface they want to penetrate. Give them some building blocks and they will surely build an unusual looking object, but it would never cross their minds to take the single block and break it open.

When trouble begins...

I just realized that I have a fear of downstairs toilets.

I have a memory of sitting on the toilet in my home as a child, my feet only just touching the U shaped toilet carpet, and suddenly seeing an insect - a beetle or louse or something. I screamed and ran out, paying no attention to the circumstances of the act of using the toilet. My mother and siblings could not find the insect, leaving me knowing that it was there, hiding, waiting for me to be alone again. In the 15 years that followed I used the toilet upstairs, unless circumstances dictated that I use the downstairs one. In these few instances I would rush, ensure my feet did not touch the carpet, and rapidly move my eyes around the floor, looking for this insect to show itself. It never did.