It was going to be a difficult week – or so I was told. Our niece, now 16, was coming to stay with us in France. It involved quite a complicated journey and beforehand there were endless texts and phone calls from her Dad (her parents are divorced) to check everything was allright. Finally I…
A late addition to Dad’s collection
As he got older my father became fascinated by ‘boring’ picture post cards. Gradually he became part of a circle of collectors and cards would arrive from around the world. Their very incongruity amused him and his face would light up when a new one dropped through the letter box. He judged them on content,…
Field of glory
It is now mid August and she has lost much of her splendour. In the last week her vibrant reds and subtle blues have faded and she no longer turns heads. How very different from two weeks ago. Then, we were living a dream that took five years to materialise. I am talking about the…
Noises off
We had key differences to resolve so inevitably our meeting was going to be strained. Ben had suggested the tea room on the first floor of one of London’s grander main-line station hotels. It was seedy and costly with waitresses over-ingratiating and over made-up. But discussions went well. The quietness there allowed us to hear…
Fair game
Claims championing the prowess of women have come thick and fast in the last weeks. First, it was over a meal when one of my sons argued forcefully that women have always been the great civilisers, and that it is through their influence on men that people live together as citizens and that society has…
The parable of the humble shoe lace
Some things are important more for what they represent than for what they are, and for me one such is the humble shoelace. These long, thin and usually featureless strands have been threaded through shoe eyelets for over a thousand years and have changed little. There has been competition - buckles, elastic, zips, plastic and…
Careless talk
Last week the phone rang. It was my very worried friend Ron seeking advice. He told me how he had just learned that his elderly mother had developed a life threatening medical condition. For many years she had been taking a blood-thinning drug following a heart operation. Earlier that evening Nurse X had collared Ron…
The bear necessities
Some time ago I saw a film about a polar bear. He was, to all intents and purposes, alone. From an aerial view he could be seen methodically criss-crossing a valley, occasionally stopping to sniff the air. After one such sniffing, his criss-crossing ceased, he turned to his right and, with purpose, set off on…
Shocks and sandals on the road to Damascus
A revelation last week in Damascus prompts me to declare that the person writing this blog is me. I do this in response to the plight of a certain Amina Abdallah Araf Al-Omari who could never have made such a statement. It now transpires that ‘she’, a brave middle-aged, lesbian academic, who since her appearance…
The band played on
In a grand room in central London on the 24 May the cameras witnessed a moment of pure theatre. For a few minutes the most powerful people in Britain, plus possibly the most powerful person in the world, were rendered impotent. They were paralysed by pomp and protocol, and the fear of losing face. At…
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