“Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.”

When a person makes an observation that captures something you’ve never quite nailed or articulated, it produces a pleasurable jolt of recognition.

Titus Maccius Plautus (c.254 – 184 BC) was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He influenced Shakespeare and Molière among others.

The importance of friends in life is not to be underestimated. They are distinct from family since they love you for non- genetic reasons. You found each other through a conscious choice.

“There are two kinds of light — the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”

Wisdom and calm reflection, with nuance and thoughtfulness, help illuminate a subject. By contrast, sensationalism, hyperbole, information overload and strong bias obscure the truth and spread falsehood. In this age of social media and constant promotion it is useful to recognise this distinction.

Evening, you gather back all that dazzling dawn has put asunder

Days have a natural rhythm of divergence and convergence, solar energy and stellar calm. That all the activity of the day finds resolution and peace each&every sundown helps give us some sense of order and meaning.

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’

The final dozen words of this famous speech – a fine attempt at bringing meaning to a traumatic event – illustrates well the music of language, the power of words and the magic of writing.

Steal a little and they throw you in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king

In an age of kleptocracy and rapacious tech business, the simple pleasures – which generally cost little or nothing – are more important than ever.

“Don’t count the days. Make the days count.”

Fabulous though Fridays are, it’s best to find the fabulousness in every day.

“Music always sounds better on Friday.”

The notion that music or any art form is affected by the day of the week you consume it on is a charming – and believable – one. Fridays have always felt special since school days (in a Western secular context).

The key to being happy or content or satisfied on your previous day is Simple Pleasures (hence the name of this blog).

Aloneness is an essential human feeling. We come into the world alone (albeit very close to a loved one) and we leave alone (hopefully close to our closest loved ones). Almost every novel touches on aloneness and many films too. Take ‘Tony’ – currently in cinemas and what was playing at this Curzon in Wimbledon – the protagonist (brilliantly played by Dominic Sessa) wakes up alone every morning in a hammock on a stranger’s deck, that stranger himself solitary. Even when he is with his (dysfunctional) family he is detached. When he calls them on a payphone from Providence he cuts an isolated silhouette. That’s why connection is so important in artistic creation and life.