A Thinking Man

Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: Distinctive Features
Frank Wills
Routledge 2009
ISBN 978-0415439527 £9.99
This book sets out to provide a concise account of Beck’s work against a background of his personal and professional history. It is divided into two parts. There are 15 short chapters which examine Beck’s contribution to explaining psychopathology, and then 15 more looking at Beck’s suggestions [...]

Read Full Post »

Although it is nearly 24 hours since I watched the first in Channel 4’s new series, The Bible: A History, I still find myself annoyed at the mere memory of it.  It ended up being more of the aspirational wishful thinking of a romantic presenter than the history deceptively portrayed in the title.
The first quarter [...]

Read Full Post »

Apologies for my absence.  I’ve been pre-occupied over the ‘holidays’ with a couple of other writing tasks that I needed to complete.  Having finished them today I found myself with a few idle hours before returning to work tomorrow and started amusing myself with dreadful similes to tweet.
For those of us who have forgotten, a simile [...]

Read Full Post »

Ok. I have a confession to make.  And I feel the need to point out that I did the deed during a difficult time in my life.  But I have to admit that I have bought and read all of Dan Brown’s books.
I turned to the The Da Vinci Code for some light relief and [...]

Read Full Post »

Poetry, like prostitution, has been around for thousands of year (though I’d be willing to bet that prostitution was probably there first).  And both will continue for thousands more, despite the best efforts of zealots to promote it (as in the case of poetry) or stop it (as in the case of prostitution).  However, whereas the [...]

Read Full Post »

The Walk 
You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
By the gated ways,
As in earlier days;
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.
 
I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way;
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
Only that [...]

Read Full Post »

From A Window

The clouds rolled soft
And kissed God’s face
Breathing air.
As you graced by
The sun made love
In your hair.

You were red earth,
Chilled rivers, trees,
Glorious land.
As you graced by
I walked with you
Hand in hand.
© athinkingman 2008

Read Full Post »

The Book of Dave by Will Self is a wonderfully rich and inventive novel describing two very different but parallel worlds - one set in the present day London, and one in the outskirts of the city about five hundred years hence. But beneath the distraction and dazzle of these worlds there are two [...]

Read Full Post »

After An Evening
Three short matches break the seal of night
To show your face and start a cigarette;
One to light the candle in your eyes
Which warmly dance their message on my mind;
One to shine the moisture on your lips
Where sun-ripe, seedless mellons hang;
The last to play all other tunes
Before the wind again cools its flame,
And we [...]

Read Full Post »

One the Death of Summer

Day was a bright one,
A summer, a rain -
Your kiss was a grey one,
A dying, a pain:

And earth was unending,
A round one, a ball -
But love had its ending,
The finite - the gall

Of a life-time,
A season, a year,
Like the dawn of a day-time,
The dew, and the fear

Of a noon-tide,
The parchness, the [...]

Read Full Post »