People boast that they want to grow old disgracefully – as the poem says: When I am an old woman I shall wear purpleWith a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer glovesAnd satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.I shall sit …
Continue reading “Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional!”
I must be mad – there is no need to comment on that!!! I’ve bought a puppy. A black Labrador to join my other three. Puppies are adorable, who doesn’t love a puppy? Well, actually – me! I love my dogs when they are all grown up and reasonably well behaved – although I’m not …
Continue reading “If my dogs don’t like you, I probably won’t either.”
As a child I assumed that everybody wrote it was only as I grew older that I realised only some of us write everything down and think in stories. I believed I was going to write heart-rending and dramatic novels. My intention was to move my readers to tears – unfortunately in the case of …
Continue reading “I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.”
In this very troubled world one of my favourite forms of escapism is listening to old radio drama and I’m particularly fond of the Paul Temple mysteries. Paul Temple was the archetypal hero, he was a rich and successful author and an amateur sleuth who was consulted regularly by the head of Scotland Yard, Sir …
They used to say Laugh and the World laughs with you, weep and you weep alone, but now it seems to be more that misery loves company. We all know that disasters sell more newspapers than good news. With my penchant for apt quotations I like the one in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina that says: …
What’s wrong with Skin deep? What do people want, a pretty pancreas? A lovely liver? One of the joys of getting older is that looks cease to matter that much. Anyone can keep up their standards if they want to, but they do it for themselves (or for their career if they are in the …
Seventy odd years ago the world was a simpler place because there was so much we didn’t know. We were past the point where doctors actually recommended cigarettes to calm the nerves, but nobody turned a hair to someone smoking whilst pregnant. As for foetal alcohol syndrome we’d never heard of it. Everyone I knew …
Continue reading “Ignorance is Bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.”
Sweet Mystery of Life at last I’ve found you. Oh no, I haven’t, quite the contrary – the mystery seems to deepen on a daily basis. But who could possibly have found the mystery of life? Stephen Hawkings? Einstein? I don’t even understand how electricity works. Why doesn’t it leak out of the sockets when …
Probably everyone knows that Oscar Wildes’s last words were supposed to have been ‘Either that wallpaper goes or I do.’ This is almost certainly not true but a famous wit like Oscar Wilde couldn’t possibly be allowed to die without a bon mot on his lips. But leaving the realms of the apocryphal I thought …
Continue reading “Death is Nature’s way of telling you to slow down.”
Has Anyone Seen My Glasses?