“Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie…” But enough about me. We are dealing here with matters of greater moment: nothing less than the perpetual battle for global domination between homo sapiens and the rest of the animal kingdom. Well, alright then: me versus mice. In retrospect, I’m amazed that I wasn’t traumatized for life by my…
(Today’s Daily Prompt suggested we write about our first day at something.) This is what happened when I rocked up for my first day in a new job in a new country – and a new culture. My instructions were to sign in at the office at 8 a.m. and call someone to arrange a…
Has any designer of a designer hotel ever actually bothered to stay in the designer hotel they designed? The reason I ask is that Sugar Magnolia and I have just spent a few nights in a designer hotel in Bordeaux (it actually called itself a ’boutique’, but the term is effectively interchangeable with ‘designer’) .…
Despite my well-documented inability to get to grips with technology (defined as basically anything invented since the Stone Age), I still have the inherent Y-chromosome marker for ‘kit’. Sadly, though, this thing I have going on with technology is a classic love/hate relationship. I love it, but it hates me. Gadgets, boys’ toys – call…
We were mulling over recently what present to buy for our darling daughter’s eighth wedding anniversary. Seeking inspiration, not to mention enlightenment and authoritative knowledge, naturally we looked online. At anniversariesbyyear.com (yes of course there’s a web-site for it) we discovered a list of ‘wedding anniversaries gifts and ideas by year’, both traditional and modern.…
It’s all the fault of WordPress. And Brian out of ‘New Tricks’. Although this blog site is unashamedly more of an ego trip than a sales pitch, I confess to sometimes feeling that it might be nice if my finely-polished aphorisms attracted an audience that extended a little beyond duty-bound immediate family and kind friends…
Today’s Daily Prompt asks whether I would thrive in a barter-based society. Ha! In a word, no. I have no transferable skills whatsoever, unless you would be willing to pay me to come round and load your dishwasher for you. No, I thought not. I was reasonably good at my job, but unless you happen…
I always wanted To write a haiku…Oh wait, I think I just have. (That’s enough poetry – Ed.)
Sunday’s Daily Prompt asked in which everyday activity you can get lost in ‘the zone’. For me there can be only one answer. The dishwasher is my domain. I don’t know if there is any single individual who can claim responsibility for liberating the masses from the drudgery of washing up by inventing the dishwasher…
Whoever first said that ‘travelling is better than arriving’ was probably being dragged to Tyburn to meet a masked man with a disembowelling knife and a mean streak. Or on the final approach to Heathrow in the middle of the long-haul early morning rush hour. In the great scheme of things, getting there is the…
the only deadhead in the hameau 