I have just published my third collection of essays this year ‘The Three Hearts of the Octopus’! This collection includes an essay on the arresting work of MK Artist Shelly Wyn-de-Bank who is now exhibiting in London and is going from strength to strength.
Below is a section from the introduction, on Octopuses, which will feature on Blue Planet II at some point I should think. I thought I’d share it with you just because I think they’re amazing:
‘…The octopus does, by the way, have three hearts and like this collection is a strange and fascinating creature. To begin with, they have no fixed shape, they are boneless, and even the Giant Pacific, with an arm span of more than six metres, can fit through an opening the size of its eye (about an inch). They have no stable colour or texture and camouflage themselves extremely effectively. There is no clear distinction between their brain and their body, two-thirds of their neutrons are in their arms. Each arm can act intelligently and independently. They are intelligent problem solvers, can learn and use tools, have a capacity for mimicry, can be sly or deceptive, and some people think they have a sense of humour. If any of my essays are half as interesting as the average octopus, I’d be surprised, but metaphorically speaking, they may have some similar traits’.
My first essay collection I called autobiographical, the second historical, this is both, with some very personal material on my Mum. It’s an eclectic mix with essays on Victorian photographer Francis Meadow Sutcliffe, meeting Ken Loach the film director, Egypt, Hermeticism, writers Levi, Nin, Koestler, Orwell, Moore Shakespeare and Bolt, Ealing Comedies and there’s even a little fiction and a few poems.
Hoping to start work in earnest on a biography or biographical study on the poet Max Ehrmann soon. I also have a new audiobook to work on, another crime novella, from Adam Croft and have just auditioned for a Disney movie. So, you never know, might be Litchborough this week Hollywood next!
Below is a section from the introduction, on Octopuses, which will feature on Blue Planet II at some point I should think. I thought I’d share it with you just because I think they’re amazing:
‘…The octopus does, by the way, have three hearts and like this collection is a strange and fascinating creature. To begin with, they have no fixed shape, they are boneless, and even the Giant Pacific, with an arm span of more than six metres, can fit through an opening the size of its eye (about an inch). They have no stable colour or texture and camouflage themselves extremely effectively. There is no clear distinction between their brain and their body, two-thirds of their neutrons are in their arms. Each arm can act intelligently and independently. They are intelligent problem solvers, can learn and use tools, have a capacity for mimicry, can be sly or deceptive, and some people think they have a sense of humour. If any of my essays are half as interesting as the average octopus, I’d be surprised, but metaphorically speaking, they may have some similar traits’.
My first essay collection I called autobiographical, the second historical, this is both, with some very personal material on my Mum. It’s an eclectic mix with essays on Victorian photographer Francis Meadow Sutcliffe, meeting Ken Loach the film director, Egypt, Hermeticism, writers Levi, Nin, Koestler, Orwell, Moore Shakespeare and Bolt, Ealing Comedies and there’s even a little fiction and a few poems.
Hoping to start work in earnest on a biography or biographical study on the poet Max Ehrmann soon. I also have a new audiobook to work on, another crime novella, from Adam Croft and have just auditioned for a Disney movie. So, you never know, might be Litchborough this week Hollywood next!
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