Haymond Lam's Page

I haven’t watched the news in a month. Come to think of it I have not watched a much TV in general; averaging about an hour a day maximum. The television had stopped being an ominous fixture in my daily life since I was 18. I found that when I started my first degree in the rough suburbs of Bradford, that our student halls had no televisions included in the rent. It just became a habit of weaning myself from soap operas, news and reality shows amongst other things.

I don’t know why, but bad new… Continue

Such a magical book brought and sterile. It’s almost sacrilege to write in it, even worse to write a diary entry riddled with typos. Maybe I just buy into the idea that Chatwin used to purchase 100 of these from a bookshop in a street in Paris called Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie- amazing advertising on the part of Modo e’ Modo. Reading Gleick’s autobiography of Newton where this curious Professor of physics with his spidery writing would lace the pages. It is even said that he would write sideways… Continue

I was a child once, living on the second
floor with fast-food smells from the shop
below. In between chanting the seven times
table saying seven sevens are forty-nine

I would run up Mannerwell Drive, up the
steep incline and would re-enact those old
wars against dragons and ghosts with
our cardboard cut-out proton packs.

Joshua would run with arms outstretched
Dirtying the floors, his mum who only
Mopped it ten minutes ago. But she knew
we were shot to a distant planet.

Those years I look upo… Continue

I applied for a dream job at the Strategic Health Authority in Newcastle. After a lengthy interview it transpired that although my academic credentials were sound and that I had a good theoretical basis in emergency planning, however I lacked operational experience. Predictably I did not get the job, but was invited to see the senior strategic planner in this organisation.

It was one of those paradoxes. How can I get experience, if I am not accepted into a position that encourages routine expos… Continue

Sitting there by the sea when darker clouds unfurl,
Chilled surf chisels the rock below; smashing them into
shards. Beachy Head sullen by encroaching salt wash,
unrecognisable by scars bared and lines etched.

Summits peaking the water, lining in formation
to face the peaks and troughs. They will smile though
prostrating to a wide vista; a view that just encircles.
Clouds coalescing spreading hazy ambience…

Through my eyes I could clearly see as we stood there.
The sun fading to aerate the sky… Continue