I have been traveling this week but only in what sounds like a pretty unadventurous “staycation” way as my trendier American friends would say. I live in East Sussex England but I have been exploring my old county of West…
Do you know that feeling when you sit around at home thinking that all your friends are out there doing wild things and having a great time whilst you are just, well, sitting around? I have to admit I have…
I was in the park last week having a kungfu sword pattern lesson and ever since then I have been thinking about how much I enjoy playing with swords. I have always liked them, ever since that first childhood plastic…
We are all freaks, one way or another. I remember, at school, finding out that my legs were too short to ever win a sprinting race but then, a lot later, I also learnt that my physique enabled me to…
There is a radio programme in the UK called Desert Island Discs where a “castaway” has to choose 8 recordings, a book and a luxury to make life bearable on that mythical desert island. I have always been obsessed by…
I noticed in yesterday’s newspaper that China has announced the death at the age of 93, of Zhuo Lin, the widow of Deng Xiaoping who was Mr. Powerful in China from 1977 until sometime shortly before his death in 1997.…
I live in the kind of town where it is so easy to put the World to rights. It is a beautiful place populated by well-meaning liberal intellectuals for the most – a mix of old hippies, public service employees…
Mid-August is an evocative time here in Southern England and after a sociable and luxuriously fed weekend there was nothing quite like rounding it off quietly in my small courtyard garden with a simple supper under the fading blue skies…
It sounds crazy over there in the USA. All those people going mad about President Obama’s healthcare reform policies sound like they have gone hysterical. Death threats in the name of God! Where does that fit in with anyone’s idea…
I went to Bexhill-on-Sea yesterday. It is a seaside town in East Sussex, England – not far from here but I have never been there before. I knew about it, of course. As a small schoolboy I read about it…