by Malcolm Pryce | May 12, 2021 | Me being a berk, Obscure Wisdom, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing
The big wooden door of Santa Maria della Scala hospital creaked open. The Blessed Saint Bernadine of Siena peered through the gap. ‘Yes?’ he said, inspecting me through rheum-filled eyes. ‘I’ve come about the job.’ ‘Job?’ ‘The Corpse-washer.’ I held up the...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Obscure Wisdom, Writing
You need his time machine. Pick up a few creative writing textbooks, and sooner or later, you will come across a reference to the famous adage coined by Anton Chekhov, called Chekhov’s Gun. It goes like this: If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Me being a berk, Obscure Wisdom
What does it all mean? This crazy, ineffable mystery of being? What does it mean? Really? As far as I can make out, we have three options. Option A. We are just lumps of meat with a pilot light that flickers for a brief fragment of time before going out. We were...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Me being a berk, Obscure Wisdom, Travel
So I did it. He really would have preferred me not to go out at night at all. Or during the day, for that matter. But blessed with the immortality (stupidity) of youth I insisted. So he said, on no account should I hail a cab in the street. Safest would be to order...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 3, 2021 | Obscure Wisdom
They say, ‘Never go back!’ don’t they? Never return to a place where once you knew happiness. Only disappointment awaits you, because, according to Heraclitus, you can’t step in the same river twice. It’s a piece of advice I would have done well to observe, but, no, I...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 3, 2021 | Obscure Wisdom
I have some bad news about the end of the world. Not only is the end of the world ‘nigh’, but it looks like it is going to be a damp squib. Certainly not worth waiting up for. Traditionally, Mankind has looked forward to this event safe in the knowledge that it would...
