My beloved asks me all of a sudden, “What’s happened to your book?” I sort of stutter and shrug. “I hope you’re not giving up on it.” Well, I… “After spending all that money on editing,” she adds swiftly, as if to compound my woes. Now’s not the time to admit I’ve been having doubts …
“And among His signs is that He created for you from among yourselves mates that you may dwell in tranquility with them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.” Quran 30:21
As guests descend, we realise that we have a space problem. The extension at the back, usually my home office, transforms into a spare room, a double bed folding down from the wall. The dining room table, at which I normally work, slides through to the other room, the door temporarily removed from its hinges …
And another reflection. Perhaps all that surfaced would and could only surface when I was ready to forgive and be forgiven. Perhaps those realities could only materialise when I had set aside my bitter rancour, and found myself capable of viewing the world from another’s perspective, admitting that I was the one at fault. It’s …
Sometimes you don’t see what blessings you truly have for years and years. Some things you only see after decades have passed. However traumatic the events immediately afterwards, now I see what incredible mercies were packed into that introduction of ours all those years ago. Yes, there was opposition, my family alarmed by the speed …
I really feel sorry for the seeker seeking in this age of fast info: the equivalent of junk food for the soul. Online teem the youthful content creators, filling the airwaves with information, as yet untested by maturity or experience, or that deep insight which comes with increased learning. Note how few of them are …
I discovered Passenger (Michael Rosenberg) in 2017, in the midst of our attempted migration to Turkey. My wife and children were settled over there, enrolled in school and enjoying life to the full, but I was having to come and go due to work. Although we had Skype then, most of my colleagues were not …
Oh dear, parents’ unreasonably high expectations are about to hit a whole new level.
I disengage with any commentator, influencer, preacher, scholar, imam or community sage who speaks of real men or real women. Religious types tend to have an obsession with both, imposing their cultural archetypes on all people, everywhere. I disengage, not because I’m a lefty-liberal snowflake (although that may well be true), but because I dispute …
Well done, Microsoft, you finally got it right: Windows 11 is a pretty decent OS. I have it running on an officially unsupported device, over eight years old. I had to do some jiggery-pokery in the registry to enable an install, but it was worth the effort, for the computer is now snappier than it …
Two experiences have impacted me recently. The first of them, watching our kids confidently taking on the high ropes treetop challenge at Go Ape. Actually, it was the crowd of ten year-olds in the slot before them which knocked me back: their bold tenacity, clambering over those obstacles high in the trees, their energetic enthusiasm, …
I’ve been feeling very unwell for weeks… nearly permanent nausea, aches, paresthesia, numbness, dizziness, shortness of breath… but funnily enough, I’ve just had a thought… kept awake by a superstrength coffee made for me yesterday afternoon… perhaps that’s all that’s wrong with me. My coffee intake! Maybe I’ll try cutting down.
One argument against publishing is the cringe factor. When I look back and re-read what I wrote a decade ago, I shudder. Hell, I cringe even at what I wrote just weeks ago. Sometimes even within hours or minutes. To permanently inscribe your sentiments in the public domain, as you would upon publishing a book: …
In many ways, my intense shyness crippled me throughout my life. And yet I must recognise that there were great blessings in it for me. Blessings too many to enumerate.
