I work out at the gym about five times a week with cycling and some standard aerobics. Whatever the advantages, they are not preparation enough for two real life challenges. Both are ungainly and require contortions, call upon muscles normally untested and are proving increasingly difficult. The first involves getting to (and from) the driver’s…
Home sweet home
Not for the first time our house has been invaded. I am not talking about uninvited mice or ants but about invited builders. It started at the end of March and was to finish in 8 weeks. With all our careful planning this was going to be bearable but, in reality, it has been the…
Two teas short of a picnic
Since my retirement from paid work I have become part of the tea-house set, and a rather picky member at that. On most days I will have tea out somewhere. It could be because I need a break from work, often it is to while away the time between appointments, sometimes it is because the café…
Trials and tribulations
We were invited to attend the public ‘defence’ of a PhD thesis one afternoon in Paris. Unlike in the UK, in France and indeed in most other mainland European countries, universities hold the oral component of the PhD exam (the ‘viva’) in public. With preliminary assessments by the examiners, coupled with careful oversight by the…
Fatuous dances
I often ponder over ‘bests’. My best soup was a lobster bisque at the Albannach in Lochinver; best prawns (with mayonnaise) at a water-front restaurant at Honfleur in Normandy. I have also been doing ‘bests’ in the ‘most-fatuous-dance’ category and until recently the holder was a moustachioed man in Vienna. He, like my wife and…
Lying in state
Normally I have little or no feeling for dead animals. While I have buried various pets and, on the insistence of my children delivered the necessary eulogies, these have been the exception. Apart from corpses displayed in the butcher’s shop or the ‘real thing’ stuffed in displays in museums, my nearest viewing of dead beasts…
Eye to eye
Last week I spotted Gordon across the street doing his weekend shopping. I announced myself, and conversation flowed. Gordon is blind, so conversation is a little different from that with my other friends because we cannot make eye contact (indeed I rarely look at his eyes) and he cannot read my body language. However with…
Watching the white wheat
Last week I received an unexpected email. "Dear Joe, I've recorded one of the Welsh folk songs that I've been singing recently. You can hear it via the link below..." I listened, and what a treat it was. Not just because of the beauty of the singer's unaccompanied voice (click here to listen to Bugeilio'r gwenith gwyn first…
Why bother?
As I was leaving a neighbour's house last week something sharp scratched my knuckle. The culprit was the head of screw. For such a commonplace thing, the humble screw comes in a rich variety of forms - length, width, head shape, drive form (slotted, Philips, Torx), thread geometry and in the material from which it…
Vanity fare
I was sitting in the underground reading a newspaper and minding my own business. It was rush hour with many passengers standing, leaving those seated in that strange, and somewhat childlike position of being in an underworld surrounded by anonymous legs, backpacks, handbags or perhaps an overgenerous coat. Identifying to whom they belonged was out…
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