Flights of the butterfly

  • In a French village

    Four plaques on a wall in the sun Four brothers who died in a war. In the lane by the church, in the square with the flowers, It’s the price that one village has paid. There’s a list on the cross and a list by the flags, carved in the hard black stone. It seems…

  • POOR LITTLE SOD

    It was early afternoon when they bounced us on the track, And there wasn’t any cover to be had. But, they didn’t have high ground, so it wasn’t all that bad And I found a little shell hole built for two. The bloke already in it had been there half a week, His head was…

  • ROSWELL

    I always come up with the same question. If the Incident at Roswell was truly a crashed alien spacecraft, why did it crash? An alien has the technology to pilot a craft, at the very minimum, within our solar system. The alien can avoid all the obstacles, has the technology to power the craft and…

  • Misogynists

    I’m sick of hearing the word “misogynist”. Currently, it is being widely misused. The word derives from the Greek “misos”, meaning hatred and “gune”, meaning woman. The current crop of “Misogynists” don’t hate women. They’re terrified of them. These are undeveloped little boys who cannot deal with the opposite sex and resort to a prolonged…

  • The Rules of the Railway

    Once upon a time, a very long time ago when I was a little boy, I had an electric train set. My Dad built it and it was beautiful. It had scenery and a tunnel. I hope my Dad knows now that I appreciate all the effort he went to. But there were problems. The…

  • Menopause

    I’m sick of hearing about The Menopause. It’s just such a depressing word. It completely misses the point. “Pause” is what you do to draw breath before you start off again. This isn’t a pause. It’s The End of Being a Baby Making Machine. I know it comes from classical Greek, “men” from “month” and…

  • What is a Woman?

    Defining what constitutes a Woman is a very popular pastime these days among the Wookies. Men should be extremely careful about asking this question of a Woman. Frequently, the next remark will be, “Please can I have my balls back.” If you ask a tigress how she defines herself, she may elect to give you…

  • The Bicycle in my Tree

    This is not the worst cycling accident in the world: I saw this picture of a bicycle in a sycamore tree some three years after losing someone precious to me. Something about it made me save the news cutting. It seems in 1914, a lad propped his bike against a tree, went off to war…

  • Life, and the other thing

    Some people seem to want to spend their lives defying death, cheating death, delaying death. In fact, a lot of them end up not-dying rather than living. If you live like that, what a waste of time and effort. If you play your life against death, you will lose. He only has to score once,…

  • Grasshopper Survivor

    This is a little grasshopper, sunning himself on the bonnet of my car. They’re harvesting hay from the watermeadow, so now he’s homeless. If you look closely, you’ll see he only has one back leg. Couple of weeks ago, I found him in my garage. Small, wounded and very bedraggled. I think I might have…