Cyclists: Saints or Sinners?

Opinion piece by Denis Joe April 2014

Since moving to Liverpool about 7 years ago there are two things that I have come to loathe: football and cyclists.

As a kid one of the great pleasures was to build my own bike. My mates and myself would go to the scrap yard near Victoria Park, in Leamington, and spend hours sifting through car parts, wrought iron and other discarded metal stuff, to find bike frames, wheels, pedals and chains. If we couldn’t find parts that belonged together then it didn't matter, we were quite happy to have hybrids (not to be confused with the general purpose bike that can 'tolerate a wide range of riding conditions and applications').

Winning is more than taking part

Striving for excellence by Denis Joe August 2013

Back in June of this year, Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg won the prestigious International Queen Elisabeth Competition, held in the Chapelle musicale, in Brussels. He reached the finals despite having, what he calls a ‘blackout’ during his performance of Mozart’s Concerto n. 15 in B flat major KV 450. In fact when he watched a recording of his performance he discovered that he had continued to play, even though he had a memory lapse part way through.

Poetry and Music

Waxing lyrical by Denis Joe August 2013

Recently I heard a work by a friend of mine. It is a soundscape made up of a selection of poems of mine, read by someone who reads them much better than I ever could, set to sound and music. I was both flattered and impressed, but also surprised because for many years I have held to the belief that poetry doesn’t need anything added to it; it should stand on its own.

Suicide is NOT Painless

A personal perspective by Denis Joe March 2013

The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that
is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to
answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest —
whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind
has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.
Albert Camus, The Myth Of Sisyphus