A Disorderly Retirement
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…
My bookshelves fill me with shame. Not the fiction section – I’ve read most of those and am happily working my way through the unread ones. It’s the non-fiction ones that stare at me accusingly. The things I could have learned, the paths I could have taken, both literally and figuratively, if only I had…
People travel with many different hopes and expectations, but if I find myself somewhere that looks like nothing I’ve seen before among people who behave in ways I don’t expect, then I am completely happy. Japan is one of those places. I think about it quite often, particularly when I see people around me who…
There was a time when we did all the painting and wallpapering in our house. Finances played a large part, but I used to quite enjoy it and the results were extremely satisfying; however, those days are long gone. I must have been a different person then. I now know that it is even more…
I have just got back from a wonderful adventure in Japan and South Korea, and although my mind is full of vibrant images, what I’m really thinking about is food. I don’t eat meat, which is very easy at home, but a bit harder in countries where you have no knowledge of the language beyond…
I like a challenge as long as it’s not too hard and requires only the smallest effort on my part. A full marathon? Never. Half a marathon? Also, never. I can just about cope with Adriene’s 30-day yoga challenge in January. I can’t say I enjoy it exactly, but I know it’s good for me….
I promise to do better with my podcast recommendations this time and suggest more than three. I used to listen to current affairs podcasts such as The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, and Newscast with Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel, but I can’t bear to think about politics any more. When…
Sometimes you just have to take a stand, resist outside pressure and say what you really think. So here goes: I never want to watch another play by Shakespeare. The last one I went to see was King Lear at the Globe Theatre on the Southbank in London. The theatre is beautiful, so atmospheric with…