Hobson’s Choice

Today’s Daily Prompt from what I had previously thought of as the good people at WordPress, but am now more inclined to think of as the awkward squad, is: If you had to choose between being able to write a blog (but not read others’) and being able to read others’ blogs (but not write…

“That’s not an abri…THAT’S an abri”

In rural France, where mains gas is just a pipe dream (so to speak) and electricity comes through overhead cables and so is more than usually vulnerable to disruption, whether from a coup de foudre or a particularly oafish tractor driver, the use of wood for cooking and heating is pretty much de rigeur. The practical downside…

Tranquility Base

New readers (and at this point you all are) start here. Still lured by the twin devils of the ego and the aesthetic (see ‘Why this blog?’) I remain hell-bent on sharing – or making available, at any rate – my ruminations on such matters as happen to grab my fancy. However, as a first…

Why this blog?

Yet another personal blog site: one of the infinite number of monkeys tapping away at their infinite number of keyboards. What’s the point? George Orwell asserted that – putting aside the need to earn a living (which happily is not applicable here) – there are four great motives for writing: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical…

Help On The Way

How the Dead saved my life On October 30th 1990, my life changed irreversibly, and for the better. This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened and, indeed, compared with meeting my future wife, our wedding day and the births of our two children, going to see the Grateful Dead occupies a comparatively…

What kind of email annoys you?

I really hate those emails, usually containing some appallingly simpering feel-good message, that urge me to forward them immediately to seven friends, on pain of eternal damnation or being held personally responsible for the extermination of the entire human race. Apart from anything else, I don’t have seven friends.