Journal

A small catch-up and a little news. The DP Fund:  started on 2 December to support MND research via the MNDA.  From all sources - single donations, recurring direct debits (annual value), and the MND Art Challenge - total now over £19,000.  Very good.  Thank you. The...

Here in Britain we’ve had a week of public anecdotes.  TV, radio, newspapers, social media (which I don’t do) all telling stories of Prince Philip.  Individuals reminiscing of the time, any time up to 70 years ago, when “I met him, and I said this and he said that”. ...

Prince Philip died yesterday.  Whatever one thinks of the British monarchy, or of the concept of constitutional monarchy in general, I hope few would disagree with my view that he has served the nation, and his wife, well.  It’s amazing that peoples around the world...

This could be heavy, or heady, stuff. It was 1538 when the young Thomas Tallis arrived at the massive Abbey of the Holy Cross at Waltham, the wealthiest Augustinian House in England.  Apparently the abbey offered him excellent musical resources where no doubt he hoped...

I hope everyone is enjoying the weekend, and for those who observe such things, Happy Easter. Also, a confession.  The last blog entry ... the expected honour ... written on April 1st, please note.  Couldn’t resist it.  Sorry. Hope it raised some smiles though...

Has anyone sensed a slight acceleration in blog entries in the last few weeks?  For the first hundred days there was one a day.  Then after the 100th on 9 July last year I said they’d be occasional: perhaps one or two a week.  That’s what happened. Recently for...

Yes, the Bard got it right: “That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet”.  Perhaps then, the name isn’t so important.  On the other hand we know the care that most parents take in deciding their child’s name.  Family favourite?  Nationally...

I think the first time I saw Arabic script was probably during that memorable student trip to Turkey in 1968, being also the first time I’d entered a prison.  Interested in the prison story?  If you haven’t read it, it’s in the blog entry of 29 April 2020 and here....

If you check the Comments you’ll see that Meriel asked if I was Spring, Summer or Autumn.  My reply: “Summer”.  Read the entry of 21 March and it might make sense. Some rummaging through the Peace archives had produced that little case of 30 fabric swatches, shades of...

This is topical.  This is risky.  Could get me into trouble.  It’s about skin colour.  And differences.  And how to deal with the differences.  Dangerous territory.  Have to tread carefully. It’s actually about a memorable Christmas present. We’re in the early 1980’s,...

An early start this morning.  Got up at 7am.  In the past I was always an early riser, but this darned illness knocks me out so much that it’s often nine o’clock before I totter out of bed. What’s the reason today?  The Zoom talk at 1pm?  No.  Visitors?  No, certainly...

Going back to Lord’s for the second jab brought back memories. It’s almost 20 years since I joined the committee of the Cambridge Society of London, which organises social events in the capital.  A favourite was and still is the annual 50-over Oxford v Cambridge...

I didn’t watch the Sussexes.  Had a read on the BBC website.  It was upsetting.  Why, I wondered? I decided that for me it wasn't a matter of whether to believe them or not.  It was this: even assuming that everything they said is true, what is it that they hoped the...

Going back to Peter Ustinov (the 5 March blog), and the career analyst who recommended he become an airline steward, it's possible that some of the factors the analyst took into account (other than the distinct possibility that PU was playing games) were his easy way...

It’s the ‘Home of Cricket’ and it’s home to the world’s oldest sporting museum.  Lord’s Cricket Ground, about a mile from where I live.  I’m not a great cricket fanatic but I know the ground well, and in the next few days there might well be a story here, something a...

Who remembers Peter Ustinov, that great actor, wit, and raconteur.  And film producer and writer.  And academic and diplomat.  And born with the splendid name Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinov.  Do read his Wikipedia entry.  Quite fascinating.  Thinking of him the...

Breakfast.  I’m talking breakfasts, not Monty.  Would you like to join me?  What’s your choice?  Eggs scrambled, fried, poached or boiled?  Bacon?  Baked beans?  Hash browns?  Mushrooms?  Sausages - how many?  Black pudding or not?  Fried tomatoes?  Chips?  Sauce? ...

Well that was easy, the ‘Oz before Oz’ challenge three days ago.  Well done, the Sherlocks. I said how stimulating I find these maps, especially when musing on the stories they tell: stories of fact, of suspected fact, of rumour, and of downright fantasy.  Here’s a...

I mentioned that I like old maps.  I own a few.  They're mostly of lands where I've lived and worked, mainly in North Africa and the Middle East.  What was the attraction?  I used to pore over them, looking for stories and then thinking of my predecessors, those...

Back to Earth - and as you can see, I do like old maps. These days, inevitably, my world tends to revolve around the illness.  Others join that world.  The Royal College of Nursing says that each year in the UK about 2,200 people are diagnosed with motor neurone...

So glad you enjoyed the escapades the other day.  A bit of fun, and memorable.  And there's a link to today's jottings.  Later. Like you probably, over the years I've donated to a number of good causes and still do.  My own regular ones include Book Aid, which sends...

What do you do on rainy winter days?  What do you do on rainy winter days when you’re like me, hampered by an illness and more or less confined to staying at home or going out in a wheelchair?  What do you do if there’s also a pandemic and lockdown restrictions?  In...

Yes, last night I slept with Alice.  The doctors believed she would help me, so we met yesterday morning.  Actually I slept rather well with her arms around me.  She stayed only one night.  Tonight she might be in someone else’s bed.  This must be one of the most...

Vaccinations?  Inoculations?   In Britain we also call them ‘jabs’.  For the flu, for measles, for cholera and tuberculosis and other travel reasons.  I once had one for shingles, a few days before it actually developed.  And two days ago our brilliant NHS gave me the...

So the consensus is to ‘keep my own voice’. To be honest, I’m rather disappointed that all of them sound a bit clunky.  I don’t use Siri or Alexa or any other AI voice but to hear them answering someone is really impressive, with tones and cadences and intonations...

Something happened in the middle of the night three days ago.  We British have a phrase, “Things that go bump in the night”, referring humorously to those strange unaccountable sounds – ghosts in a haunted house, old plumbing, floorboards creaking, things tapping on...

Not many of you will have the skill and insight that I have these days.  The floor in my flat is of rather nice wood, and I’m getting to know the grains and knots and markings really quite well.  If I were placed, blindfolded, in any part of the flat and with no other...

A short one.  I’ve had a note from someone who recently clicked the ‘Comments’ tab at the top and realised that comments they’d left in the past had been followed by other readers' observations on the same theme, and they hadn't known about them. That was because,...

I think I’ll start using Tennyson as a yardstick. Sorry to mention his “Ring out, wild bells” yet again - see last two posts - but the scenes in Washington over the last couple of days have been so dramatic and extreme that I can’t resist reflecting on them in the...

For want of anything better to write about I'll just mention this: emails from friends commenting on the poem in the 1/1/21 blog, three days ago. It seemed so apt, they said. There was Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1850, ringing out the old and ringing in the new.  Out...

Goodbye to a year we will never forget.  Welcome to one of hope, as with all New Years.  For this year especially, hope for effective vaccines rolled out quickly across the world.  Hope for the end of isolation, social distancing, and the appalling figures of...

The last choices from the Desert Island Discs challenge.  The BBC programme asks: If you can take only one of your eight discs to your desert island, which would it be? You have the Bible or another religious text, and the complete works of Shakespeare. What other...

Well here we are at the eighth and final music choice for my time on a desert island.  The BBC’s radio programme, running since 1942, invites an individual to talk about his or her life, to imagine they’re alone on the island, and to choose eight discs that mean...

A musical composition has stayed with me over the last 50 years.  We earnest – and often not-so-earnest – students would play it for ’atmosphere’ in college in the evenings as we drank coffee or cheap wine or beer, and discussed “Life” and similar earnest things....