19 July 2021

Mystery fun with criminals, bishops and barristers

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FOR those of a certain age (i.e. anyone born in the last century) one word will be sufficient to evoke fond memories of unmissable criminal court dramas. A reminder of tantalisingly clever tales rich in humour, wry comment and a panoply of credible and almost loveable rogues. And that word is Rumpole. Horace Rumpole, barrister…. Continue Reading

19 July 2021

Mystery fun with criminals, bishops and barristers

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FOR those of a certain age (i.e. anyone born in the last century) one word will be sufficient to evoke fond memories of unmissable criminal court dramas. A reminder of tantalisingly clever tales rich in humour, wry comment and a panoply of credible and almost loveable rogues. And that word is Rumpole. Horace Rumpole, barrister…. Continue Reading

15 July 2021

Beware: freedom for all includes the idiots

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AS we hurtle towards F-Day it might pay to heed the news from Australia. If you can find it. So little is ever classed by UK editors as sufficiently noteworthy to be included in their pages. Unless, of course, it is of a bushfires, mouse plagues or shark attacks. Although the latter have now been… Continue Reading

14 July 2021

A holiday in Looe could get lost in translation

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BOOKING a holiday in Cornwall? Better make sure your agent puts it in writing. Think of the poor souls desperate for a summer break who decided on a couple of weeks along the sunny (?) Cornish Riviera. Suddenly they find part of their time in a holiday park perched on the North Coast cliffs could… Continue Reading

11 July 2021

Baffled by Hadrian’s Wall and a mystery postcard

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SURELY mine is not the only brain that has gradually turned to mush thanks to this endless lock-down. I sense previously lively little grey cells have coagulated into something resembling sago pudding.  Thus my head is host to an amorphous  splodge of lifeless nothingness. A once active organ languishes listless and lifeless. Bogged and befuddled,… Continue Reading

9 July 2021

Spy tale irritates more than it thrills

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BOOK lovers are a stubborn and peculiar breed. They will determinedly push on to the very last word despite all the negative vibes they are receiving from their current choice of reading matter. They plough relentlessly forward, deaf to a background noise about plot, characters, writing style, inconsistencies, typos (polite word for spelling errors), plodding… Continue Reading

5 July 2021

Have a cuppa with pride, not prejudice

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NEARLY choked on my afternoon cuppa. Spluttered and dribbled before disaster was eventually averted. Yorkshire’s finest it was, too. You know, the brew that guy with the accent as broad as the Dales is forever chuntering on about. Seems that the much adored novelist and regular tea drinker Jane Austen (pictured) has fallen foul of… Continue Reading

5 July 2021

Yippee, freedom . . . it’s holiday time

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Aah . . . the sheer joy, relief, escape, freedom and get-away-from-it-all happiness of a holiday trip.  These hordes are lockdown escapees from the Australian state of Victoria queuing to “enjoy” the snowfields, as pictured by the Herald Sun. Yet again I am prompted to wonder what is the sense and point of holidays. Why… Continue Reading

4 July 2021

Better to be clever than smart

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ALMOST daily we are urged to place our trust in rapidly advancing new technology. The catch-cry is “Get Smart”.  It is almost biblical in its unwavering insistence. Accept and ye shall be saved. Adapt to everything smart and ye shall enter the Elysian uplands where all the gizmos and contraptions that surround us will cease… Continue Reading

28 June 2021

Get set for National Eternal Optimism Day

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EVERYONE ready? Got your Union flags close to hand for some frantic waving? At least for 45 minutes. The bunting dragged out from storage to drape between houses? And hang there limply for days long after, a sad reminder of what might have been. The fridge cleared to make space for the packs of beer?… Continue Reading

27 June 2021

Taking care needs to work both ways

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THE clue is in the name: care worker. In other words, a person whose job (though they may also be an unpaid volunteer) is to provide care to those less fortunate than themselves. To people who maybe disabled, incapacitated, incontinent, immobile or suffering one or more of the wounding barbs that life has a nasty… Continue Reading

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