I stood there, my head bowed, my shoulders hunched. This is how it feels to be dragged from the cement shoes of a comfortable rut. The slow, steady strain on my legs became an excruciating amputation. My ankles pulled free from my feet. Bones snapped, cartilage tore, veins pulsed blood onto the soft brown clay of the yard.

At the center, on the lawn of the courthouse, sat a log manger with a life-size nativity scene cut out of plywood. If an civil libertarian had complained about the nativity being on public property, he would have been hunted down like Santa’s reindeer during bow season.

Their mystique comes from the fact that, once upon a time, someone cared enough to hide them.

There’s never been a war in the history of the world that wasn’t started by the wealthy for the wealthy.

A kitchen that’s too clean has no soul. No flavor.

When hope is offered, hope responds.

Plus, publishing’s inherent conservatism, means that what little did get through was weighted towards the commercial end of the scale, which is not the kind of writing that excites me.

All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet – barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work.

Life doesn’t take itself seriously for long. Joy leaves an imprint even in the hardest sorrow.

I teach Korean translation at the British Centre for Literary Translation summer school, so I see an emerging generation too, who are around my age. I’m hoping to find time to mentor, and to help emerging translators to a first contract through Tilted Axis.