Essays on belonging, memory and the quiet beauty of ordinary days

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Free-view a selected few of our lovely essays. If you like what you see, unlock the entire library by joining as a Platform 13 member. Your support and your presence in the arena, keeps this community going, supports chosen animal charities and does more good than you think.

The August Almanac

When concern becomes control

Somewhere, right now, a figure is sat at a kitchen table before dawn. The house is silent, the coffee beside them is a warm version of hot, and the only light is thrown by the open window of a glowing laptop. The rest of the house is fast asleep... I imagine them being tired. Not because they manage their time poorly, or enjoy working silly hours, but because this piece of personal sacrifice, was the only way to protect something else. Perhaps they promised the afternoon to h

Cornerstone - Featured - Free

6 min read

When Food Leaves Home

An exhausted pizzaiolo, weeps softly in the dim light of a kitchen corner. Floury head, in floury hands. The culinary heritage that was boyhood, manhood and his very lifeblood, just died on the table... ...Rest in Pizza. Gone now, but ever-remembered - the classic beauty of what he called pizza - the disciplined, ascetic stretch of dough, frugally flavoured with a thick slap of tomato salsa, hand-torn mozzarella; perhaps a lean slice of local ham and a leaf or two of basil

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5 min read

Chauffeur - All about the heat.

There is a recognisable sort of chap standing beside a very clean car outside a top hotel. He wears two principal things - a peaked cap, and an expression of professional, unbothered serenity. He opens the door. He inclines his head. He says "Sir" and "Madam" with the respectful deference of a fellow who has said it many times. And when you have spread yourself across the leather interiors, he glides you smoothly across town without, it seems, doing anything so vulgar as maki

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4 min read

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August Essays for P/13 Members

Nostalgia - What lives down Memory Lane

Nostalgia. It's a beautiful soft, sepia-coloured word, isn't it? Comforting, cushioned and universally understood, although in terms of nuance, it punches way above its weight. Unlike terms that refer directly to longing, or regret, nostalgia isn't really about wanting to return to the past, or somehow have the past return to us, but much more subtly, it suggests a profound and meaningful gratitude that the past actually happened at all. Nostalgia has inherently soft edges. I

Featured - Members

4 min read

"La Crémerie" - It's all about the cold..

There was a particular little shop that used to exist on almost every French street corner, and although most of them have quietly disappeared, their ghosts remain if you are lucky enough to spot one. You will be walking through some entirely ordinary town or village, when your eye drifts upwards and catches an old façade, it's painted signage faded and faint, but sure enough - perhaps above a mobile phone shop, an estate agent or some other high street blandness, you will se

Featured - Members

5 min read

Closure... the knock that never comes.

Closure. It's one of those words that sounds like it should solve something. Firm, clinical, faintly medical - the sort of word a doctor might use, or an estate agent. Somewhere between stitches and stitch-ups...It has the satisfying sound of a door shutting properly, seat belt fastened, an attaché case - closed and clicked. We reach for it constantly and perhaps a bit unconsciously. "I just need some closure..." "She never got closure..." "It gave me the closure I was lookin

🌱 Brave Seeds

5 min read

Our reimagined archive brings together the essays, stories and observations that have shaped Platform 13 over the last 12 months.

It is a place to wander through slowly the challenges of the human condition, the odd things that are friends with language and place, the important pleasures of food and friendship, and the many subjects that catch our attention somewhere along the way.

The complete archive access is available exclusively to our P13 members - click below to join our growing community.

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Essays about the inner workings of being human: personality, relationships, behaviour, boundaries, change, difficult people, private dilemmas and the stories we tell ourselves.

The Spirit Level holds life up gently, examining what unsettles us, shapes us and occasionally knocks us totally off balance.

A collection devoted to words, language, etymology, history and life in France.

Here you will find disappearing traditions, village rituals, curious expressions, cultural observations and traces of the past still visible in the present.

It's all the stuff you didn't know you needed to know.

Food is rarely only about food. The Long Table gathers essays about cooking, wine, cheese, hospitality, friendship, guests and the rituals of eating together.

These are stories of nourishment in every sense: what we serve, what we share and what unfolds when people take their places at the table.

For the pieces that refuse to be hurried, or neatly filed elsewhere.

Books, art, travel, culture, memory, curiosity and observations from the edges of everyday life gather here.

The Waiting Room is a place for digressions, discoveries and those unexpected subjects that invite us to pause a little longer.

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Postcards from the Platform's Edge

"Postcards from the Platform’s Edge is a collection of 84 sharply observed essays by John Duffield, tracing the humour, heartbreak and quiet absurdities of modern life. Thoughtful, witty and deeply human, it is a book to dip into, linger over and return to".

Shelley Kenigsberg - Editor, Publisher, Writer.

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Essays on belonging, memory and the quiet beauty of ordinary days

How Brave Seeds Works...

Free-view a selected few of our lovely essays. If you like what you see, unlock the entire library by joining as a Platform 13 member. Your support and your presence in the arena, keeps this community going, supports chosen animal charities and does more good than you think.

The August Almanac

When concern becomes control

When Food Leaves Home

Chauffeur - All about the heat.

August Essays for P/13 Members

Nostalgia - What lives down Memory Lane

"La Crémerie" - It's all about the cold..

Closure... the knock that never comes.

The Categories

SL

The Spirit Level

FC

The French Connection

LT

The Long Table

WR

The Waiting Room

Enter the Brave Seeds Library

Our book has arrived...

Postcards from the Platform's Edge

Stay Connected.

The Spirit
Level

The Long
Table

The Waiting
Room

Enter the
Brave Seeds Library