Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Wax That Melts Our Wings

I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.

The Wax That Melts Our Wings
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise

Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.

The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
Love Me Tender

Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle. 

"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked. 

"What?"

"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."

Love Me Tender

Poetry

Can I Kick It? Yes I Can

Can I Kick It? Yes I Can

There is a reason why moveable type was invented. It was to stop people gazing at their own navels wondering if they were going to go to hell for thinking naughty thoughts about Lucy the dairy maid in the next village, and start them gazing at the inside of their craniums, and thinking about whether there was life outside their planet, and if the simplest explanation was probably the correct one, or whether something was rotten in the State of Denmark. Or perhaps if a rose by any other name would smell quite as sweet.

Granted, there's a hell of a lot still written about naughty thoughts and Lucy the dairy maid, but at least some of it is written in an intelligent way, and we can choose to read about Lucy the cow whose DNA is being used to find a cure for cancer if we feel like it.

Or stick with the dairy maid. It's your call.