charles barrow's writing

Now that the evenings will be drawing in I've lined up my Autumn reading.

I'm more excited than I probably should be by my new autumnal socks collection.

This is an accidental selfie. I was trying to take a photo of a statue in the grounds of Quarr Abbey. But it was a bright day and the sun was shining on the tablet screen and I didn't realise the lens had reversed itself, there is probably a technical word for that, oh yeah, idiot.  Anyway, I like that it caught the path behind me winding away into the trees. 'The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep.' That is my favourite line of poetry, it's the only one I can ever remember. The poem is by Robert Frost.

Kate Bush is all over the media at the moment, and for good reason, she's Kate Bush goddamit, and she's also doing her first live shows in 35 years. I'm sorry not to have tickets but I did see her 3 times on her first time around. Now, in amongst all the media coverage I picked up that Kate had said she's no longer keen on a song she wrote, way back, called Oh England My Lionheart. This is crushing news. It's one of my favourite tracks. It often winds itself, like ivy, around my brain and stays for days. It's a hymn to England, referencing Shakespeare, the Thames, the Tower of London, London Bridge and Peter Pan, amongst other things, all in a haunting melody. What do you do when one of your idols no longer likes a piece of their own work that you very much admire? What a dilemma.

Recently I sat down to watch a Sci-fi film called The Wall. That's all the info that the TV listings magazine gave me. It gave the film three stars. Perfect, I thought, and hoped for a brainless romp with aliens and big explosions. What I got was a subtitled, Austrian-German mood piece called Die Wand (dir Julian Polsler). It wasn't at all what I thought I was buying into. Twice in the first 15 minutes I reached for the remote control and twice I put it down again. The film drew me in slowly, and held me, and it's stayed with me since. I've just opened A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, a book that has been gathering dust on my shelf. I chose it over a detective novel that would have been a familiar and easy read. I'm assuming the Hemingway will be more of a challenge, or at least take more of my focus, but I'm certain it'll live longer in my memory. I'm not the first to realise that indulging in quality creative works by top draw exponents is v