Wandering around town
I saw the morning light one day last week and thought I would go for a walk with my camera before breakfast. This might seem unremarkable to all you healthy people out there but to me, that morning, it was…
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Things dying and things new born
When Shakespeare wanted to move his action on in The Winter’s Tale, he asked us to join him in a joke…a Shakespearean joke that is, don’t expect to split your sides. A minor character, Antigonus, a Lord of Sicilia, has…
Is skiing worth dying for?
I was looking whimsically at my Rollerblades the other day. Battered, well-worn but dusty, they are sitting in the loft unloved and abandoned. I have made one of those promises, you know the sort, where in a moment of duress…
Did we win the Iraq War?
So here’s a quiz. Write down the answers to these questions – in a simple single sentence please. Why were the following wars fought? 1) 1st World War 2) 2nd World War 3) Vietnam War 4) Iraq War 5) War…
Getting better? How do we know?
We don’t live in an age when people put total belief in what their doctors tell them – well not unless it is something pretty serious, like you only have so long to live and there isn’t much you can…
The Pope can’t win
He has done it again. (His Holiness) the Pope is in Africa and has made another pronouncement which has upset many of his fans and all of his critics. It is the old question of condoms. He says that not…
Remembering Robert Jasper Grootveld
A friend told me about a funeral the other day which had happened in Amsterdam last week. Robert Jasper Grootveld, one of the founders of the anarchist Provo group that livened up Dutch counter-culture and brought real changes to Dutch…
Clever people, those Chinese
I guess it must be about two years since I started to learn Mandarin Chinese but recently, my brain haemorrhage has interrupted my study since my neurologist said, don’t laugh, that I should avoid too much complex thought. Complex is…
It’s The Flintstones
I am a Sussex lad – brought up on the land that lies between the rolling chalky downlands, imaginatively called, The South Downs, and the English Channel, known in these parts as The Sea. When I was a wee lad…
Some Zen thoughts in my garden
I need to get out more. Just looking through the windows onto the garden makes me realize that I should be out there sorting things, not only, for the rapidly developing Spring but also Summer which is already shouting out…