Master of none

So, have you missed me? It’s been almost a fortnight since my last post. Thought not. I blame the good weather. Not that I have any objection to seeing the sun shine, but it does bring with it certain time-consuming responsibilities in the grass-cutting department. Although, as a happy update to my earlier post, I do seem…

Always read the instructions – if you dare

After a mild winter, the life cycle of the flora that surrounds us here at Tranquility Base is already well advanced. The forsythia is budding, the Narcissi are in bloom, the air is filled with birdsong. And the grass needs cutting. This year, we have a new weapon in the unending war against nature. I’ve cranked up the shock…

Why my ankles are on fire

Hard to believe I know, given the absence of any residual physical evidence, but I used to be a bit of a gym rat. No, really. Not for very long, admittedly, and to nothing like the obsessive extent of the creatine-guzzling monstrosities that you might see pictured on the cover of magazines with titles like ‘Bulge‘, ‘Musclebound’…or maybe ‘Transformers’.…

Invisible ageing

My passport went off for renewal last week. Naturally, the application process entailed getting some new identity photos. Or, as it’s also known, a reality check. Compared to ten years ago I’m rather paler (the Abu Dhabi tan has long faded) and the face fungus is still a comparatively recent addition. Otherwise, not too bad really: a little more…

Brainless Stupidity #2

As a general rule I deal with the day-to-day vagaries of modern life by, if not quite ignoring them, at least treating their impingements on my consciousness with what I like to think of as a placid stoicism. By and large, to use a modern idiom, IDGAF. Sometimes, though, only a rant can help. Like…

Investment for dummies

There are very few things I’d claim to know more than most about. This rather limits – to put it mildly – the range of possible responses to this recent Daily Prompt: “Take a complicated subject you know more about than most people, and explain it to a friend who knows nothing about it at all.”…

So, annoying

You have no idea how much of a struggle it’s been not to start this post with the word ‘So’. For that is our subject today, dear reader. More particularly, the increasingly pervasive practice of begiinning sentences with this poor, innocent syllable. To borrow another common modern usage: WTF? This has been going on for years now,…

Marital Duties

A recent WordPress daily prompt enquired: “What are the things you do within 30 minutes of waking up to ensure your day gets off on the right foot?” In my case there are two essential tasks that must be performed. Of the first – and I do mean the first – nothing more needs to be…

Hair Piece

I’ve always been attached to my hair – and thankfully my hair has always been attached to me. I was born yelling lustily and sporting a good headful of hair. Of course I don’t remember that but there’s an obvious parallel with my earliest memory, which was equally traumatic to me (although I suspect my mother…