A Disorderly Retirement
A person can have too much excitement in life. As if the dancing Knickerbocker Glory and Liquorice Allsorts from Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker weren’t enough, I then went to see Russell Brand performing his stand-up routine at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. I woke up the next morning in a state of bewilderment – what had…
I think the greatest pleasures might be the ones that take you by surprise. I went to see Matthew Bourne’s version of The Nutcracker last Saturday and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I have to admit that I’m not normally a big ballet fan, although I’m full of admiration for the dancers….
I have just completed a jigsaw called High Jinks. Now, before you get any ideas, it is a very sedate picture of bookshelves full of books written in the late 19th and early 20th century about and (presumably) for English girls. I don’t think boys read books about girls then and maybe they don’t now….
No-one wants to be reminded of Christmas in January. I have to admit that this Christmas was a great deal better than last year’s, which is not a time anyone wants to be remember, but still it’s just so last year, isn’t it? I was brought up in a household where Christmas did not officially…
It turns out that a state of torpor is harder to maintain than I had imagined. I thought that a bit of semi-hibernation in January would be easy enough – squirrels seem to manage it without much problem, although how would anyone know? Maybe after a day or two those squirrels are thinking that they’ve…
I was just reading one of those articles that pop up at this time of year with celebrities telling us all the things they’re grateful for, which naturally got me thinking. Mostly right now I’m just grateful that it’s not last Christmas. I think we need a word to express a strong desire not to…
Long long ago in those far-off days when pandemics were confined to the big screen, David Cameron announced that Britain’s progress should be measured not just by financial growth, but also by the nation’s happiness, which is quite a brave statement from a Conservative Prime Minister. In 2010 he asked the Office of National Statistics…
I decided to follow my own advice from last week’s blog and rent a Christmas tree this year rather than buying one. The way it works (I gather) is that you visit the farm, admire the lovely trees all potted up ready, choose one, pay for it and then they deliver it to your house….
I wonder if we in the west are heading towards the post-consumption age? I have always objected to being referred to as a consumer – it reduces our humanity somewhat to be viewed as simply a creature that devours things. Much has changed in the past few years and rabid consumption is now frowned on…
I suppose it was inevitable that Covid would catch up with me in the end – I haven’t exactly been hiding myself away at home. Fortunately, I had a mild case and in different, non-pandemic, times I’d just have dismissed it as a cold. In fact, it was mostly inconvenient and involved a surprising amount…