12 February 2021

Criminals galore lurk in lockdown bedside library

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Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #8 Feb 2021: THE Pisa-like bedside tower of books looked like toppling before I got around to recording some of its content. It was only thanks to some extended sessions of lockdown reading that it has been whittled down to a less perilous height. Sadly it… Continue Reading

12 February 2021

Criminals galore lurk in lockdown bedside library

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Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #8 Feb 2021: THE Pisa-like bedside tower of books looked like toppling before I got around to recording some of its content. It was only thanks to some extended sessions of lockdown reading that it has been whittled down to a less perilous height. Sadly it… Continue Reading

31 January 2021

Good news on books, jabs and theatre to fight BBC gloom

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Doomed depression image

Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #7 Jan 2021: I HAVE been on a bit of a downer. Today, however, I am showing a degree of positivity by using one of the slightly less pessimistic of the several D-words available to describe the recent state of mind and body. Yesterday the temptation… Continue Reading

29 January 2021

Dealing with the nitty gritty on hoes and dykes

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plymouth-hoe-tower (from Historic UK)

PERHAPS this blog post should come with an advisory caution; like those that precede some of the raunchier dramas screened on post-watershed TV. A warning about bad language or offensive dialogue. Displaying an awareness of some readers’ fragile sensibilities.  Guarding against young minds being led down sinful paths; the elderly shocked into losing a grip… Continue Reading

27 January 2021

Happy fat makes deadly fat and an easy Covid target

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Wild horses can't change us by Mikael Kristenson courtesy Unsplash

  Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #6 Jan 2021: THE stable door is now shut tight. Bolted and barred. Triple locked and with no sign of a key or code. And unoccupied. The horse it once contained, an unruly beast at the best of time, seized its pre-lockdown moment and is… Continue Reading

22 January 2021

Deniers living in a world of fiction and horror movies

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Covid emeregency. courtesy Mufid Majnun, Unsplash

Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #5 Jan 2021: WHAT is it that they don’t understand? Are the almost 100,000 deaths so beyond comprehension that they believe them to be a total fiction? Do the BBC’s recent series of excruciating hospital scenes unnerve them so much that they dismiss them as some… Continue Reading

20 January 2021

New writer’s thriller reveals Canada’s divisive dark side

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Book cover Osmand's Creek

ONE of the many pleasures gained from reading crime fiction is being plunged deep into places never previously visited. Or, if having been there only superficially as a mere transient, now getting down and dirty with the locals. No longer passing through but going well and truly off piste. The crime novel as a Baedecker…. Continue Reading

19 January 2021

Bras and knickers come before books

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Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #4 SO many Covid conundrums to confuse and ponder. The more our masters attempt to clarify, the murkier the restrictions become. How far from one’s home is “a reasonable distance” yet close enough to be accepted as an exercise zone? Precisely what qualifies as an “open… Continue Reading

12 January 2021

Cuddles for goals but not for grandma

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Celebratory cuddle as picture in the Daily Telegraph

Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #3 04 Jan 2021: THOUGHT for the day: money does not buy brains. Nor can it buy common sense, or consideration for others or the community at large. Shell out zillions but there’s no guarantee the recipient will be transformed into a truly mature and responsible… Continue Reading

9 January 2021

Resolving not to make a resolution

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Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #2 02 Jan 2021: SAME old, same old. Here we go again. Back on the media roundabout as the familiar format for each year’s beginning is once more regurgitated. Not even all the shifts in lifestyles forced upon us by the pandemic’s restrictions and changes can… Continue Reading

8 January 2021

Turning over a not so new leaf

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Living and coping: Year #2 of Covid-19 01 Jan 2021: AND so it goes; another New Year’s Day following yet one more New Year’s Eve. Ho hum. After enduring a long line of such pairings, I still have yet to gather much sense of endings and beginnings.  Something more than the mere flicking over a… Continue Reading

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