My hot week
We have created a routine to enjoy the sunny weather while not subjecting ourselves to the risk of frying. Essential watering takes place late evening, which at the moment is just before 8pm. That is when F will water those plants who need it, ideally so they can hold onto the water that would dry…
Do you like puzzles?
That would be my opening remark in a conversion with a stranger. Perhaps someone behind a sales desk or a cashier. That would lead me to ask why, when it is high summer, do so many young people wear all black? That’s the thing about summer. It can be summer of bleached out highlights one…
Tome Sweet Tome
Terence Morgan did not like being called ‘Terry’, or being referred to as a ‘digital immigrant’. He just preferred the ‘peel and flap’ method of reading The London Review of Books, compared to the ‘finger skating’ of the Tablet version. But there was more to his reading. The ‘LRB’ was to him a vital window into…
From the centre
The Chair of the Party Group did not expect a peaceful meeting. Discussions of next years’s Council Tax and Budget had just started and this was the first time some ward councillors could comment on the Leader’s proposals. The Chair expected comments like “Sellout”, “Government stooge” and “Traitor”. These would be from one of the…
The Pathway
Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Rome must be one of the few in Europe, mused Monsignor Mark Hennessy, where ecclesiastical attire raises no eyebrows at all. He was trying to relax, his eyes regularly flitting to the Departures board, hoping his flight would be boarding soon. He had noticed gaggles of African nuns, coteries of…
Good Old Jimmy
“Doctor? Would you mind looking at Mrs Mitchell’s hand? She’s the Canadian lady in cubicle four” The nurse smiled at Dr Khan, turned, and walked to her next patient. Dr Khan slid the curtain of the cubicle back and saw a thin woman of around seventy, her right hand heavily bandaged, held straight out and…
The Bloody Glove
The Chambers’ Christmas Party was now just a fuzzy memory, and I saw, from the odd-shaped gift-wrapped item on my desk, it was Secret Santa time. I moved the pink-ribboned folders to one side and squeezed the package. Soft and small, I thought. Surely clerks in this firm would get at least a bottle of…
MacJournal: such a great app!
I have been using MacJournal since 2006 and I am still finding talents that surprise me. Only yesterday I found a new way to add PDFs of documents to my monthly journal. I can use MJ to store PDFs of my incoming correspondence and use the scheduling fields to remind me when I need to…
You should be ashamed!
It strikes me that we live in a period of no shame in public life. By ‘public life’ I mean celebrities, whether by profession or notoriety, elected members of any party, and those who put themselves in the public eye. However, mainstream and social media are quick to publicly shame some people who would prefer…
Treaty Centre: the death of Debenhams.
If I were marketing commercial space in a shopping mall, like Hounslow’s Treaty Centre, I would have described Debenhams as being the anchor of the site. It was a well known department store and one of its roles was to draw shoppers in the area so they could visit other shops in the building. But…