THERE is this bee buzzing around in my bonnet. Very annoying. It’s been there quite some while and is becoming increasingly irritating. Just won’t go away and is so difficult to ignore. It’s called Parkrun. You’ve probably heard of it; a weekly mass display of micro managed outdoor masochism willingly endured by thousands worldwide. Like…
WHAT is so damned special about fish and chips? The question has to be asked after again foolishly succumbing to the fiction that a chunk of lukewarm battered cod and a heap of pale limp would-be chips is the food of the gods. An endlessly desirable feast for a nation. A national treasure even. Allegedly…
TIME for reflection on this running life. For “reviewing the situation“, as the fiendish Fagin sang in the wonderful film version of Oliver, way back in the 1960s. A need to stop awhile and consider what lies ahead. Like a rambler who has tramped their way steadily to the top of a Dartmoor tor, resting…
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…
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…
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…
THERE can be no excuse or support for the extreme racial abuse that is incessantly directed at footballer Marcus Rashford, MBE. No justification or excuses can be made for such base, thuggish and uncivilised behaviour by one human being against another. And even more so when the puny and unsustainable reason seems to be that…
EXCUSE the aspirated headline. My apparent descent into Cockney lingo has its reasons. As does the punning use of this Australian phrase that was rapidly popularised after being given birth by a Telstra television ad in 2002. As explained by the Urban Dictionary, it is now used when someone “is pissed off” at another person,…
SOMETHING’S not right. I already had my suspicions but chose to ignore them. Now I fear that is no longer possible; recent events have convinced me so. Time to face the fact: incidents of going into another room and not remembering why you did so are commonplace in one’s more senior years. At first, they…
Living, coping and observing in the age of Covid #9 NO doubt the nation’s heart has gone out to another victim of the pandemic. Fortunately it is Random Acts of Kindness Week (yes, really) and help may soon be on its way to this poor soul. There are likely numerous others in much the same…