Blog – Jack Sanger

Looking for Eric

I cannot be compared to Eric Cantona, either as a boy or a man. I would never have progressed beyond the school football team and I never did karate. But I like to think I am a better philosopher. I might even be a better actor. Anyway, bridging to the last blog-post and the search… Know More
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Autobiography: to have been or not to have been

I tweeted recently (@profjacksanger) that ‘The past is but a blank page on which the historian writes fiction.’ In many ways, the business of autobiography follows suit. We re-write our histories incrementally as our lives progress so that they fit and augment our circumstances at the time of writing. Whether we recognise it or not,… Know More
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The fruit of knowledge

There are windows in our lives that open momentarily and shut forever. They reveal where we have come from and point to where we will eventually go. Like angels balanced on the points of pins, we are given a gift of knowing and then it is taken away from us. We are young and in… Know More
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Sanity not vanity in the author

Ok, think about a bordello. Think about one of its rooms. Think about what happens inside it in microscopic detail. There is a sperm with its single imperative. Where’s the egg? Oh there it is. Isn’t it huge? Like a sun about to supernova. It must beat its tail harder. It’s a marathon and a… Know More
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A Room With Two Views

I am in Soho, London. The sun is bright but does nothing to mask the purgatory of the city’s coagulated humanity. I know that I must be seeing it like a Martian because I have been a mountain man for months. I have overwintered beside a wood burning stove as the snow piled ever higher… Know More
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This little site of mine …long may it shine

I sometimes believe in reincarnation. I look at a tree and think, “That’s a bit like me,” that mountain ash. Or, imagining my future self as a hawk. Or experiencing the conundrum of seeing myself suddenly as another human being; precipitated by a child’s eyes or bearing. A life lived can often result in these… Know More
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A Peeping Tom and War Poetry

Bingo, a peeping tom and war poetry It would be hard for any technology-using child of the 21st century to put themselves in my place in 1953. Earlier posts on this site draw pictures of an innocent time of nesting, damming streams, fantasy medievalism with lances and shields, a tiny primary school of 23 pupils… Know More
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Father and Son: an end to certainty

God, the father and son: an end to certainty. How old is a child before he knows his father is not omniscient? How old is he before he knows that the village priest is an empty vessel? The latter is easy to answer. It came to me when I asked, during choir practice, Who made… Know More
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Slates, frozen milk and green woodpeckers

Slates, frozen milk and green woodpeckers My slate was a rectangle, big enough it seemed to my small hands. It was bordered with wood, maybe pine but probably beech. The writing implement, my stylus, was not chalk but a smooth cylinder of slate, too. I have no memory of the holders. They were probably… Know More
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Distance lends confusion

Distance lends confusion I have just looked up the village in which I spent seven years, from 1947 to 1955, Shadforth. Now it has a small website and a sort of potted history which, if not directly contradicting my memories, at least allowing little place for them. ‘Potted’ here is a metaphor as in the… Know More
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