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…
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?…
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…
WHEN trawling through the innumerable Facebook pages devoted to crime fiction it seems as if Australia has resumed its status of more than two hundred years ago; a distant, unknown, almost unheard of land in danger of falling off the edge of the world. And this was before Covid-19 persuaded its dithering ensemble of state…
Minimalist décor the only answer. Forget hanging pictures on your walls. At least one of them, or even a mere detail, is sure to offend someone. And you never know who or when. They will suddenly take offence, plead harm is being done, or demand reparations for some long ago act or words. Hardly a…
A BOOK obtained by an accidental encounter; a volume I had never considered in the several years since it first appeared in 2017 and won the Costa First Novel Award. Not even as an impulse buy while browsing bookshop shelves. This intriguing, mesmerising and continually delightful tale was plucked from a box of unwanted items…
Unfathomable. Incomprehensible. Only a few hours after footballer Christian Eriksen was brought back to life thanks to prompt on-field action with a defibrillator, youths broke into a Sussex football club and vandalised the life-saving equipment there. Why? Such behaviour is almost beyond belief in what we like to think of as a civilised society. On…
FAME is a wonderful thing; it overrides ability in so many fields of endeavour. But nowhere more so than in the world of publishing. There the principle is simple: names sell. Celebrity is everything. Much to the chagrin of authors who have spent years honing their craft. Facebook “likes”, Instagram followers, Twitter retweets; these are…
IN the words of advice so often given, it was time to “get out more”; extend my horizons. Not physically, but in more mentally stimulating terms. Specifically, to broaden the reading experience, to redress the balance of genres ingested in my reading time. A glance at my bookshelves provided ample proof; without going into great…
MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN: well, Noel Coward got that right. Out comes the sun and thousands of Brits head for surgeries, pharmacies and A&Es in search of treatment for its unwelcome side-effects. NHS stats show that over three days close to 30,000 of us visited its website for information on heat-stroke and heat exhaustion. So,…