In no particular order, here are my favourite ten blog posts from this year. What do you think? What would you add?Someday, all this will be a memory* - Revolution Cycle10 things we believe - Escape the CityThe Art of Artlessness: On Living Simply and Naturally* - Zen HabitsAlain de Botton on Gratitude - The School of LifeTop 10 Running Quotations - Run with MarkFear of Philanthropy (avert your eyes) - Seth ...

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. Christopher Morley   The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.  Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish.  Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. Iris Murdoch   When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations:  bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so ...

What is this life if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass,Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight,Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty's glance,And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth canEnri ...

Post office clerks put up signs saying position closed And secretaries turn off typewriters and put on their coats Janitors padlock the gates For security guards to patrol And bachelors phone up their friends for a drink While the married ones turn on a chat show Gentlemen time please, you know we can't serve anymore Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there's nothing to go And by five o'clock every ...

I read a great feature in the Guardian recently with hundreds of tips from authors for aspirant writers. You can read the full list here but I've quoted a few of my favourites below: Jonathan FranzenInteresting verbs are seldom very interesting. Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sinKeep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If y ...

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.   In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.   Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   It m ...

Wan-der-lust (noun): a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about. This is a term familiar to most people, both as a definition and as a feeling. But it doesn't cut it for me. I think there's a better one. Wanderlust is primarily about "the travel bug" but the magnetic force that acts on me is more about adventure than pure travel. They often overlap but they needn't. Swimming the Solent and running up l ...

"It was during that performance of Rigoletto that opera imprinted itself on Katsumi Hosokawa, a message written on the pink undersides of his eyelids that he read to himself while he slept. Many years later, when everything was business, when he worked harder than anyone in a country whose values are structured on hard work, he believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life ...

"In Israel young fanatics with explosives strapped to their bodies were wiping themselves and busloads of hated strangers off the planet; insect species were being extinguished every five minutes in the Amazon forest; military coups were being bloodily launched in Africa; dams were being built in China, making tens of thousands homeless; but in Keldo Woods, alone and immune and having slipped his clerical c ...