Taking it easy can become a habit.
I’m just “taking it easy” folks because that’s what nurse tells me to do. At least for a week or two while the drugs take in. If I behave, they tell me, I have a good chance of a complete…
Tony Benn (1928 – 2014) – the British Labour Party's Saint Francis ofAssisi.
Tony Benn (1928 – 2014) I am sad to see the passing of that seemingly eternal ‘young Turk’ of British politics, Tony Benn. He lived long enough to survive the vilification and ridicule that was often thrown at him by…
Syria three years on: Ten thousand children killed, five and a half million children displaced. Time for action.
The Syria will have been at war with itself for three years this week. Statistics don’t always paint the whole picture I know, maybe we just need to see the above photograph, but the crisis in that collapsing country has…
The fluid on my lungs is finally diagnosed and I've been told to "takeit easy."
As some of you may know I’ve been unwell throughout 2014 so far but yesterday I had some, well mostly, good news. After a series of x-rays and a CT scan, the fluid on both my lungs has been partially…
Licking my wounds after pruning the roses in my Lewes Spring garden.
I spent most of Sunday pruning my roses here in my Lewes, UK garden on the day that the temperature rose to 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit). With all the essential early Spring gardening jobs done, I can sit back…
How Moscow-based New Yorker, Marco North, recruited me for an unusual new publication.
I’m proud to be included in this unusual new anthology published today, In The Night Count The Stars (Bittersweet Editions http://www.bittersweeteditions.com/ ). It’s the first time my work has appeared in a custom-made e-book and I’m feeling very cutting-edge seeing my…
Brilliant director Claus Güth reawakens me to the excitement of opera as theatre
Recently I’ve been watching a DVD of that greatest of all operas, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in Claus Güth’s sensational production for the Salzburg Festival. It made me realize how jaded I had got about new opera productions – I often…
So who was David Cameron ringing?
David Cameron ✔ @David_Cameron Follow I’ve been speaking to @BarackObama about the situation in Ukraine. We are united in condemnation of Russia’s actions. 8:18 PM – 5 Mar 2014 Or so we were told this week on Prime minister David Cameron’s twitter…
Remember the Light Brigade and the first Crimean War casualties.
There’s a lot of sabre rattling going on in Europe but, I hope, it is posturing between Russia and the United States. John Kerry seems like a sensible man and some of Vladimir Putin’s ministers seem more conciliatory than their…
Marcel Proust’s rudeness and Lazarus’ shock are the themes for my two newly published Fibonacci poems.
Maybe we don’t take madeleine cakes enough with weak black tea. I’ve only had the proper French version of these little cakes once but I can see why the French novelist Marcel Proust (1871–1922) rated them so highly in his massive seven volume…