Brave Seeds Journal

Welcome to Brave Seeds

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 September Sampler

Just one more... French Pâtisserie

There are few cake-related lies told with greater sincerity than “No thanks, I couldn't possibly...." Particularly when the last chocolate éclair on the plate is in play. The French pâtisserie counter is one of those rare places where adulthood briefly, but totally, fails me. We may have a mortgage, a pension and strongly held opinions about climate change, but put me - a grown-ass man - in front of twelve pretty cakes behind a pane of cough-proof glass, and I become eight ye

🌱 Brave Seeds

4 min read

The Final Re-set.

Apparently, this is the year of the Great Reset. I keep hearing it. The dotty interpreters of Tarot cards and astrologers I tend to fall asleep to, seem terribly excited about this particular lap around the sun, with various celestial bodies changing signs, cycles ending, cosmic nodes re-aligning and energies shifting with the annual planetary diaspora. These are all apparently conspiring to encourage us to reconsider our relationships, careers, purpose and whether or not we

🌱 Brave Seeds

8 min read

Serial Discontent

It is too hot. I know this because I have just returned from the Boulangerie, where everyone was queueing calmly, in the one-time weirdness of being in complete agreement. They were of one mind, chat-jacking each other's stories of "le chaleur" and when in the name of God's holy doughnuts, it will end. Today, the mercury will nudge 39 degrees Celsius - or 102.2 on the Farenheit scale - if you happen to live in a country that has put a man on the moon. Silly that we still use

🌱 Brave Seeds

5 min read

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August Essays for P/13 Members

One Degree at a Time - Lasting Change

If you have ever felt yourself in the middle of a big shift, you are not alone. Almost everyone I have spoken to lately, including all of us here at Platform 13, has felt some degree of change moving through their lives. Some of it is planned, and some of it arrives uninvited, like an unwanted house guest. The reasons vary, and it isn't really about astrological charts or timing. It is simpler than that: change is always upon us. Much like the waves, changes come and go, cons

The Spirit Level

5 min read

"Here's what we do know"...

I hear that phrase on the news quite a bit, every time there is a live report from the scene of something dramatic or tragic. "Here's what we do know.".. It's the baseline of established truth. The poured concrete on which further clarification can stand. It might not be much, but it is solid and reliable and certainly good enough for most of us, given the circumstances. No educated guesswork. No stabs in the dark, no taking a shot at anything. Which brings me, as neatly as

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5 min read

Winging It.

Somewhere around fifty million years ago - give or take the casual margin of error with which only part-time Paleontologists and sloppy, tropical architects appear comfortable - a small semi-feathered dinosaur looked down at its short little arms and thought... Absolutely nothing at all. It didn't ponder for a second, and ask "are those arms still useful?" Nor was there a debate around them falling off to make room for wings, to serve the higher purpose of flight. It did not

🌱 Brave Seeds

6 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 P/13 members - click below to join our growing community.

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The Brave Seeds Journal Library

Classic Novelty...

John Duffield

6 min read

The Coal-man.

John Duffield

7 min read

Avoidance in Better Clothes..

John Duffield

6 min read

The Corner Shop.

John Duffield

7 min read

Country Mice in Paris..

John Duffield

5 min read

Meet me at Wagram...

John Duffield

5 min read

One Degree at a Time - Lasting Change

Vanessa Grant

5 min read

Just one more... French Pâtisserie

John Duffield

4 min read

"Here's what we do know"...

John Duffield

5 min read

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Browse by Category

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.