Postcard from Belgrade in 1963. ‘A week back in London, then to Lebanon, Jordan etc’ We all know about the past being a foreign country [LP Hartley, The Go-Between] and in recent days I have come to realise how true that oft-quoted phrase can be. A large handful of well-worn postcards, wrapped in a torn plastic…
We all know about the past being a foreign country [LP Hartley, The Go-Between] and in recent days I have come to realise how true that oft-quoted phrase can be. A large handful of well-worn postcards, wrapped in a torn plastic bag, have taken me back down the years and stirred memories that until now have…
Home! Where my Berry ancestors once lived. Researching family history is a minefield for the novice and the unprepared. This lesson was quickly learned with my first foray into searching the archives in the hope of finding clues to my lately discovered Welsh ancestry. To contact any Public Records Office or similar repository and merely…
Dilemma upon dilemma. Indecision resolved by decisions, which next day are quickly reversed. Back to square one. Is this the mental turmoil that all sportspeople face as the body slows and energy fades? The deciding when to quit. Common wisdom says the clever ones know when to stop. They accept the situation for what it…
Now, I want to make myself perfectly clear … There must be no misunderstanding … Make no mistake about this … Blah, blah, blah. Such well-worn phrases. So overused. Every day, someone, somewhere is prefacing their remarks with such statements of clarity and precision. And they are usually people of great (self-)importance whose pronouncements are…
The elephant is back in the room, wearing his tinsel, Santa hat and stupid grin.
Where will it all end? When will the unwanted guardians who loom over everything we do give us our lives back? Today we have been warned of the health hazards in that time-honoured childhood pleasure of licking the bowl at cake-making time. Gawd help us. If that were so, I should have keeled over decades…
Is there anyone out there who is not suffering from a complaint, an allergy, a put-down, a slight, oppression, depression, stress (usually self-inflicted), sidelining or some feeling of inadequacy or discrimination? There is almost a daily queue to voice a complaint of being attacked or assaulted mentally or emotionally. When analysed, the allegations seem to…
Okay folks, I hear you. The hint has been made loud and clear. As the Walrus famously said: “The time has come …” Your message was writ big and bold in the sands and shingle of Marazion this past Sunday (and earlier in the year at St Levan): there is no recognition for geriatrics who…
A change of genre is in the wind. Goodbye fiction, hello non-fiction. The memoir From Paupers to iPads that I published way back in 2011 has long been due for revision. So much needed correcting or expanding in the light of subsequent research, but it was a task continually begun and then set aside. It…