A Disorderly Retirement
I love an odd fact – I refuse to call them fun facts, which seems like a feeble attempt to liven up an essentially boring subject. I quite like the word factoid, which I think sounds futuristic and of the moment, but it also makes me think of less attractive words like paranoid, rheumatoid and…
Children love jokes and the longer they take to get to the punchline, the more they seem to enjoy them. A favourite from my childhood was the one about the wide-mouthed frog. It had all the elements needed to make it a perfect joke: funny facial expressions, an endless lead-in, a deeply flawed main character…
This week I have been shaking things up, sometimes literally and sometimes less so. The literal shake-up is mostly taking place in our garden, where I am trying to tie up the various rose bushes that are out of control. I know that it’s our national flower and much loved by many, but I can’t…
I have just come home from visiting the literary festival at Hay-on-Wye. It is one of the highlights of my year because I go with two lovely friends and we see fascinating people talking about their lives. It is a perfect combination. The speakers at Hay are truly an impressive bunch: they have launched world-changing…