A vignette drawn from real life, as remembered by David Wemyss (April 2012)

Room C28, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
17 November 2002

The ten thousand trivial accidents of the day in a secular life which exert a troublous influence upon the soul, dimming its fair surface with many a spot of dust and damp, these give place to a divine stillness which, to those who can bear it, is the nearest approach to heaven. A sharp word, or a light remark, or a tone, or an expression of countenance, or a report, or an unwelcome face, or an association, ruffles the mind and keeps it from fixing itself upon its true good - John Henry Newman, The Reformation of The Eleventh Century

A stair that has not been deeply hollowed by footsteps is, from its own point of view, merely something that has been bleakly put together out of wood - Franz Kafka, Aphorisms

“I think you’re going a bit too far now, Mr Salisbury. Modernist literature wrestles with the intuition that our words won’t do our bidding, but this should not serve as a manifesto for the aggrandisement of habitual untruths, untruths in even the most humdrum pieces of everyday conversation.  more>>>