My tally for items lost in the last 12 months has just reached five. The outcomes have been varied - a mobile phone left on a bench was returned two weeks later after negotiating with an anonymous man and giving a ‘goodwill’ payment of £20. A cherished umbrella left hanging over a billboard in Oxford Street…
Just pretending
Right up to my teenage years reciting a poem out loud or acting in the school play were essentially impossible. Learning lines was difficult enough but even if the words were memorised, the presence of an audience would strike me dumb. Performance and I were incompatible. Similarly, pretence and deceit were an anathema. One of…
An unsettling holiday
Three weeks ago I lost the use of a word. Ask me how I felt about my recent holiday in Rajasthan [see Magic Carpet, greyhares blog, 22nd Jan, 2011] and out would come ‘fascinating’, ‘spellbinding’, ‘enriching’, ‘educative’; but ‘enjoyable’ – no! The problem was that any feelings I had of enjoyment had been drowned by those…
Magic carpet
Every other year we take a special holiday and this time it was to India. The star attraction was a 1,000 mile journey through Rajasthan travelling by rail at night in the "Palace on Wheels" and sightseeing by coach during the day. The sleeper carriages and restaurant cars had been renovated to recreate a velvety…
Seasonal cheer
At 7.40am on Tuesday 21 December the TV cameras turned once again to look at the moon. And, in keeping with predictions, it had disappeared - eclipsed by earth's shadow. Journalists and astro-pundits dwelt on it being the first full lunar eclipse on a winter solstice for almost 400 years. Although interesting, for me it was…
The power of an empty chair
The week before Christmas was always going to be a challenge. The conflict was clear. On the one hand, I am, or was, an unsociable man and in the past have found house guests difficult [see ‘A bit of bah humbug does you good’, 23 Dec 2009]. On the other, on the 18th of December a…
My brother’s keeper
After the usual pleasantries we sat down to lunch. The soup was served without a hitch. Not so the distribution of the bread which was greeted with some consternation. A guest, or was it my wife, had noticed that one end of the baguette was missing. Somebody had removed, and presumably eaten, this much-coveted crusty…
Man in a hurry
I am now three years into my retirement and last month things changed. Suddenly I was a man in a hurry. At a dinner with six others, average age over seventy, it was clear that the each of us had decided how we would live out our lives in terms of what we should do…
Short back and torture
I reckon I have had my hair cut every 6-8 weeks since I was four, which makes last week’s my 500th. The trouble is that I have disliked each and every one, finding them at best unpleasant and at worst, plain horrible. I have nothing against barbers, I just don’t like keeping still and I'm not…
What’s in a face
Just as I have a system for recalling words, I now have one for faces. For words I do a mind search. As others do, I scan through the alphabet focusing on each letter in turn looking for those that best match the starter letter of the lost word. I then run through second letters…
The Joe Collier Blog 