trying to distil a little gold from the dross of our ordinary experience. For me stories work and words – reading them, writing them, teaching them.

I think I was probably always doomed to be a teacher: at the age of 10 I was left in charge of the recorder group – and had to teach the boys, after the music teacher left in despair. This was when I discovered my preferred teaching method: hitting them on the head (with the recorder). It’s flawed, of course, as all mortal things must be and that brings me to this website.

the search for perfection, for incorruptible gold, for immortality. It comes towards the end of the process – at the point where, were the experiment to have been successful, the splendour solis would be. Instead the chemicals in the hopeful alembic will suddenly bloom into beautiful iridescent flames, which glow in all the colours of the rainbow. The moment is brief and beautiful and it means the alchemical process has failed – no perfection has been found or created.
Nevertheless this bright, radiant moment of failure in a futile task, has always seemed miraculously hopeful to me: someone, somewhere has not given up. There is nothing more hopeful than that and I can only wish for the courage of the alchemists, who amidst the mocking laughter of their peers set out on an improbable quest.