i understand now why everyone comes home from Ireland with stories. While I was with him and Maureen in Enniskillen, Joe Corrigan...

I'm taking to boat from Fishguard to Rosslare tomorrow. Crossing the same sea Terry crossed with his mum and dad when he was three or...

The trick is, I suppose, not to attribute your sadness to the wrong thing. I’m not sad because of you or us, or because of waiting, or...

I am being haunted by the old ladies at bus stops again. I'm sure these women are going about their business perfectly happily, but I...

It is no accident that Shakespeare cast Romeo and Juliet as 13 or 14-year-olds. Separation is so heavily laced with grief when you are a...

I realise we are a grain of sand on a speck of dust but I’m beginning to think that The Universe actually does care about us. Why else...

I know it should bring some comfort to the grieving that perhaps life really does flash before you when you die, but it makes me a little...

With his body bent strangely at knee and hip and with that twisting face turned ghostly under stage lights, Lyle Lovett makes me think of...

Norman B from Life Elsewhere radio very kindly asked me to take part in his Valentine's Day show. He quizzed a panel of arty-types about...

I had those videos digitised The ones that sat in a slouching stack. “Yeah, I must get around to that," you said. Too late – they’re...

Terry wrote more moon songs than anyone I know. He loved other people's moon songs too, particularly that heartbreaker from Jimmy Webb....

Luke Wright is touring. Go and see him if you can - he's a smart, bright talent and while he's excellent at 40-something he'll be even...

There’s a photograph taken with a neighbour’s camera of you on McIlroy hill with your mother. Her curls blowing into her eyes, she’s...

Mick Green I'd forgotten I'd written this obituary - 11 January 2010 - for Mick Green. He was bloody great. For those of us who saw one...

We used to go to Dunblane every year to see Terry's mum, Florrie. I'm fond of that little town. It has a soft character and charm about...

I had a conversation with a guy today about that thing some men do. The ‘How can I present myself to this one in a way that would...

I found an old leather pouch, shiny as a Prospect Park conker, with a stubborn, time-worn brass catch. It was tucked behind an attic beam...

Here's Steve Gibbons singing Tulane at The Robin, Bilston. I went to this gig for complicated reasons. Mainly because Steve was, for...

An interview I did with Jimmy Webb some years ago. He was, as you would hope, a darling. Like Michelangelo’s bafflingly intricate flying...

As soon as they came into season Terry would buy gladiolus - for me, for the house, for those audacious colours, but mostly because they...