From my upstairs windows in Llanystumdwy, near Cricieth in Gwynedd, I can look out on Cardigan Bay, and the sea runs through our house – not literally, of course, but metaphorically, or perhaps emotionally.
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‘The sea runs through our house – not literally, of course, but metaphorically, or perhaps emotionally.’
From my upstairs windows in Llanystumdwy, near Cricieth in Gwynedd, I can look out on Cardigan Bay, and the sea runs through our house – not literally, of course, but metaphorically, or perhaps emotionally.
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‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
Jan Morris was born in 1926 of a Welsh father and an English mother. She spent the last years of her life with her partner Elizabeth Morris in the top left-hand corner of Wales, between the mountains and the sea. Her books include Coronation Everest, Venice, the Pax Britannica trilogy and Conundrum. She was also the author of six books about cities and countries, two autobiographical books, several volumes of collected travel essays and the unclassifiable Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. In 2018 she was recognised for her outstanding contribution to travel writing by the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards, and published In My Mind’s Eye: A Thought Diary. This was followed by Thinking Again, a second volume of her diaries, published shortly before her death in 2020.
More about the author →An essay on Welsh identity from Allegorizings, the final book from the late Jan Morris.
‘Shame and regret are certainly not the same things: je ne regrette rien, like charity, can cover a multitude of sins.’
‘The insularity of Texas has always entertained travellers, coupled as it is with extreme technical sophistication, and Texans of course love to make the most of it.’
‘There’s this paradoxical nostalgia where even though yi suffered, yi miss it.’
Memoir by Graeme Armstrong.
‘I stagger from the shock. I feel the corners of my mouth turning down. My jaw begins to tremble. Yes, yes, yes, I say to myself, get ahold of yourself.’
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