Month: March 2018

One day I must write a book talking about all the snatches of conversation I have heard in my travels. We arrived at the Wednesday market in Wells. A stallholder was telling one or two passers that him and a friend had played golf last Saturday when everything was redolent with snow. It gave him much amusement to tell them that he had lost 12 balls and that his friend had lost 13. It was quite a...

 “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper”. They say that when you get older, you tend to eat less. I can't say I've noticed. The world of calories is still a closed book to me. I freely admit that I eat too fast and too much. The problem is that I enjoy it. There now, confession over and it's only eight o'clock in the morning. What does strike me however is the...

"Find something to celebrate in your differences". I love the conciliatory mindset that is implied. I just heard the quote on TWR radio and this stimulates me to write today's diary.... I find the word 'love' as it is currently used to be virtually meaningless. I don't even want to talk about the American version pronounced 'lerve' which is a scattering of momentary attention which is as likely...

So far as these three fashionable young ladies are concerned, the man sitting on the steps does not exist. If you had told them that there was someone sitting on their right they could not have described him. Even if they had looked directly at him, they would not have seen him. However, the picture is deceptive. These three young ladies may live in worlds of their own. It would be most unlikely...

I remember a few years ago being in Finland about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle amidst the snow. It was so quiet, you could almost hear your own heartbeat. I found that it massively increased my sensitivity which is normally fairly high and I became sensitive to the sound of dripping water, the crack of a twig 50 m away, the cry of a bird high up in the sky. This memory came back to me...

As with most things in life, there is more to this than meets the eye. I see people attacking snow as if it was an enemy and not part of the natural world. I see people racing to finish the job as quickly as possible as if it was some form of competition. As a result, they exhaust themselves. Have we ever seen videos or films of country people scything hay in the fields? Do we not see the...