How much do you remember about your dreams? How many can you recall, right now? During a recent conversation a friend was telling us about a very strange dream that he had had. He could recall it vividly, a few days later. As I listened I couldn’t think of any recent dreams. There are themes… Continue reading The scariest dream I ever had
[Contains swear words] In the late 1980s, for reasons I will not go into right now, I drove with my father to a place near Queens Park, London NW6. I followed what had become a familiar route: up Wood Lane (W12), right at the Pavilion (a pub), past the North Pole (another pub) and on… Continue reading A few of the places where my father worked
The word “nosebleed” has not appeared on this Blog until now. I find the Search option on this site very useful. Sometimes I am about to draft something that has been playing on my mind and find that I have already drafted and posted it, maybe years earlier. But there’s been nothing so far about… Continue reading Nosebleeds
A third reflection on the 10,000 photos that I can access any time In two earlier pieces I have reflected on the 10,000 photos that I can access any time. They are either personal to me or were sent my way, as prints or digitally. I am trying to break this theme into smaller chunks,… Continue reading 10,000 Photos: Part 3, before 1986
I return to the subject of crosswords and find that everything that I wrote in this piece, back in 2020, still applies. As it says, “I learnt how to do cryptic crosswords at my father’s knee, as it were”, but rarely look at them these days. My father continued to get a daily paper until… Continue reading My father’s way of doing crosswords
The school year here in the UK runs from 1 September to 31 August. If you have a child born on the first of these dates they will be the oldest in their class. Any child born on the last of these dates will be the youngest in their class. There might still be some… Continue reading Daily reminders of being 15, 16, 17, 18
4 April 1980, 43 years ago today, was a Good Friday. My mother and I took our usual trip to Woolworth’s for Easter eggs, and a local bakery for hot cross buns. Attempting to cross the High Road, I was hit by a car and thrown several feet into the air. I wrote about it… Continue reading “You won’t get much for 50p”
The clocks went forward in the early hours of yesterday. Our first experience of British Summer Time this year was a cold and wet West London morning but things had cleared by evening. It stayed light until after 7.30pm, as it will do for many months to come. We still have plenty of clocks and… Continue reading What I think of when the clocks go forward
I have been thinking recently of the two members of my family who made it past their 90th birthdays. My mother’s sister died in 2019, aged 91. I wrote this piece, about decompression, on the way to her funeral in Dun Laoghaire. My oldest relative by marriage, who we knew as Uncle Mido, was married… Continue reading “Better’n steak, boy, better’n steak”
You might well have heard of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). You might have read, and understood, his major work, “The Critique of Pure Reason”. I tried to, as part of a political philosophy paper at university, but most of what I wrote in that week’s essay came from HJ Paton’s book “The Moral… Continue reading Word of the Week: Kant
The Compartments 