I had thought, very seriously, of heading round the world on a bicycle next year. I have rethought that thought – and won’t now be doing that. Indeed, for the time being, I’m putting this blog (with all the posts-that-haven’t-happened of the past few months) on ice, with a view to consolidating it perhaps with … Read more …
Misc
New blog address now definitely up and running
If you’ve found this blog, that’s great. I hope you find the posts, such as they are, stimulating and challenging. If so, then make a note, please, of my new definitive blog/website address, at WWW.PSYCHLOTHERAPIST.COM. Mark Brayne Read more …
Switching Sites
Delighted to discover that people I hadn’t realised were following this blog (well, at least one, in the person of Caroline Finnigan at the BBC) are so doing. See comment to the last post on Tiananmen Square, and apologies for leaving you out of the credits, Caroline. The psychlotherapist blog continues, for those armies of … Read more …
Tiananmen Anniversary Approaches
It’s quite extraordinary to think that it’s now 20 years since Chinese students and much of Beijing – then still Peking in BBC-speak – rose up and occupied Tiananmen Square to call for democracy and an end to corruption. I have a picture somewhere undiscoverable of a much younger MB standing on pretty much the … Read more …
Glasgow Therapists’ Conference Wakes Up to Climate Change
Beginning seriously to speak in public about my own firm conclusion that climate change catastrophe is now inevitable, and relatively soon (10 years? 15? Certainly no more than 25), is a bit like Coming Out. But at an inspiring conference of politically-engaged psychotherapists in Glasgow this week, speaking that truth as I see it was … Read more …
People Just Aren’t Interested
Oh dear. We’ve just installed solar water heating, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and it’s working brilliantly. Completely, so far, doing away with the need for any additional gas water heating. But, what’s the first thing the neighbours said when we first encountered them this week after the installation? Read more …
Findhorn and Farewell to Father
So, my father’s funeral has been and gone, as has my curtailed Findhorn retreat and my own same-day 59th birthday. And while my sibs, my kids (excepting daughter in NZ) and nephews/nieces were there with my steps to see Dad off in Birmingham, for ancient but still important family reasons, my Mum and I needed … Read more …
It Really is Over. A Paradoxical Relief
Just to prove that I am blogging from the real Scotland, and not like Neil Armstrong from a Hollywood studio (OK, I know men went to the moon), a couple of Very Scottish Photos. One of an abandoned, ruined but thoroughly Wromantic 18th century barracks built by the English in their initially vain (and perhaps … Read more …
Do We Deserve to Survive?
The photo doesn’t show it very clearly, but with the journey resumed by train from Edinburgh to the Highlands, across the Forth Bridge (see pillars in the background), I’m moved to wonder whether we as humans really deserve to survive. My tendon is behaving itself after all, to my surprise, but this morning in Edinburgh, … Read more …
Greetings from Achilles
Readers of this blog from last year may recall my Europe trip being held up for several weeks in Vienna and Budapest with a sore left ankle. Well, Achilles is back, and the rest of the body to which the tendon is attached is, after just one day, laid up in Hawick, stlll Scottish borders, … Read more …