A Disorderly Retirement
All those guides to retirement say that life is cheaper once you retire, but I have my doubts. It might be the case if you ended up spending lots of money on commuting, smart work outfits and oatmilk lattes, but none of that applies if you work from home, which I did. Retirement can turn…
As still more coffee shops prepare to open their doors in Newbury, I do wonder when we’ll reach peak coffee. At what point will the supply of willing coffee drinkers just dry up? There are only so many people and, despite our best efforts, there’s only so much coffee we can drink. I’m trying to…
When it comes to wasting time, scrolling through the internet is for amateurs. There are far more interesting and creative ways to keep yourself occupied instead of cleaning the kitchen floor or sorting out your finances. In fact, I feel quite proud of my ability to find absorbing activities that enable me to avoid proper…
This week another illusion was shattered. It’s surprising I have any left. I have long been a fan of Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics podcast, but it has taken quite a grim turn in recent weeks with its in-depth reports on the opioid crisis and I’ve been giving it a miss. However, last week’s interview with Tom…
I have started to wonder lately about my tendency to hang random things on walls. Things that really shouldn’t be there and, if I were of sounder mind, probably wouldn’t be. It all started with a beautiful old mahogany wardrobe that we were forced to buy many years ago when we moved to England from…
I am always quite fascinated by those people who lurk in the corners of museums. I’m not talking about unsavoury characters, but the room attendants, the ones who stand there quietly and make sure that no one chucks red paint at artworks or glues themselves to the exhibits. Personally, I’d leave those gluers attached –…
It’s not something I thought about until I went to Louisiana. You don’t encounter alligator much in Britain, on or off a menu. Pescatarians eat fish and seafood, but what about cold-blooded creatures that live in the sea, like serpents and snakes? Insects and frogs are both cold-blooded, so can I eat them? I think…
Newspapers are so depressing I don’t know why we have one delivered every day. I flip through the actual news pages, reading a headline here and a paragraph there until I land with relief on the so-called lifestyle pages. Those articles I read with great interest. You know, the ones that tell you how to…
I am entangled in a destructive relationship and I need to get out. Something called the Oddbox is trying to take over my life. For those of you fortunate enough never to have encountered this manipulative little item, it is a weekly delivery of fruit and veg that are so unusual or misshapen that no-one…
What do you do if you wake up in the morning to see the rain lashing against the windows and the clouds scudding across the sky? My advice would be not to go out for a walk in the countryside. Now, admittedly, we’ve had such a wet and windy winter that it can be hard…