How are your sleep patterns? Perfect, disastrous, or somewhere in between? Mine are somewhere between those two extremes, nearer to “perfect” than “disastrous”. I expect that’s true for most people. The following 1,360 words are about sleep, leading to a memory about the best hour’s sleep that I have ever had. I’m afraid that the… Continue reading The best hour’s sleep I ever had
Last July, in this piece (“A funeral changes everything”), I wrote the following: I have been on a mission to see live music, and play live music, as much as possible, in memory of the woman whose funeral prompted that first evening in a new venue [a pub in Harlesden where the reception took place]… Continue reading Reflections on my 100 most recent live performances
A tale of two priests. The things that you say and do, and the responses that you get. [There are 1350 words in this piece.] Do you feel, generally, that you can predict the kind of response that you will get to the things that you say and do? Or is there usually a level… Continue reading “He’s got a lot to say for himself, hasn’t he?”
Back in 2019 I noted, in this piece, that I am not much good at medical chat. My memory is fine when it comes to things like biographical detail and conversation recall but medical information rarely stays in my mind for long. It might be a good thing. As that earlier piece noted: “Maybe it’s… Continue reading Word of the week: Hyperplasia
How long is a generation? A quick search will provide a range of answers. This Wikipedia page suggests 20 to 30 years, with the following definition: A generation refers to all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively. It can also be described as, “the average period, generally considered… Continue reading Generations, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler
Happy New Year to you. May 2024 be a better year for you than 2023 was. During the last two festive seasons my son and I both had Covid in the days after Christmas, as you can read in this piece from 2022 and this one from 2021. We have escaped it this time round.… Continue reading A Covid-Free Start to 2024
Any keen quizzers will almost certainly have come across the following question: If you write out every number as a word, which is the first (and only) one to have all of its letters in alphabetical order? In case you don’t know the answer, you can work it out for yourself by starting with one,… Continue reading Word of the week: Forty
Here’s something I wrote way back February 2016, which still applies today: I often recall these last two lines from the first poem in Ted Hughes’s “Birthday Letters”, “Fulbright Scholars”: At twenty-five I was dumbfounded afresh By my ignorance of the simplest things I am way past 25 but dumbfounded almost daily by my ignorance… Continue reading Word of the week: Session
You are probably familiar with the concept of “Six Degrees of Separation”, the idea that you are within six steps, or “six handshakes”, of everyone else on earth. When I first came across the idea I realized that my quickest route to the 7.9 billion other people on the planet is through the church hierarchy.… Continue reading Musical degrees of separation
Here we are, a fortnight before Christmas Day. ‘Tis the season to send out cards. Friends and family have been messaging to confirm address details for me, and for other members of my family. They have been messaging via WhatsApp, which is probably how I will communicate my seasonal greetings to them. I have already… Continue reading What not to write in Christmas cards
The Compartments 