While these days we occasionally go to the cinema, visits to theatres or concerts are rare, and trips to see opera or ballet even more so. Outings have not been helped by the Covid pandemic and only now have visits started to come back, such that in the last few weeks I have been reminded…

Each day after my gym sessions I have a cuppa with friends. Our cafe is at the quiet end of a large room that looks out over a swimming pool. By tradition, the other end serves as a meeting place both for children as they wait the few minutes before getting ready to swim, and…

                     Each morning after my session in the gym, I have a coffee and a chat with two friends. Recently, we talked about professional vocabularies - as a doctor I spent years learning new terms, many derived from Latin or Greek. By way of an illustration, I…

In last week’s blog (published on 10 February), I asked readers to suggest a word similar to ‘vista’ but which could be used to refer to a scene in a small room rather than in a large outside space. In response, ‘Merrily’ wrote asking me to find - if needs be to invent - one…

Most readers will know of my love for words and in whatever I write I try to use words that express my thoughts with precision. This blog is about an occasion when the word I sought did not seem to exist; well, despite a search through several dictionaries, I could not find the one I…

This blog is about a moment when I was out walking - hobbling - in Brighton and suddenly everything changed; for the next hour or so I walked pain-free and without a care! It happened on a day when I had been walking with particular difficulty and had begun to ask myself if I was…

This blog is primarily about a joke of mine that worked! However, to complete the picture I have added some background material from the sixteenth century. I have been telling jokes since I was a small child, indeed clowning was one of the few things I did well. Over the years, most of my jokes…

This blog has its origins in this year’s most unusual Christmas lunch. What made it different was that amongst those around the table were three who don’t often meet together but have now known each other for around eighty years. The most senior was Margaret (now 99), who had looked after Martin (now 81) when…

This blog tells the story of a recent episode in which I managed to escape from the gloom of a miserable afternoon by day-dreaming. My gloom arose after we saw a retrospective exhibition of the works of Mark Rothko at the Louis Vuitton Gallery in Paris. The day dream recalled a visit Rohan and I…

On most mornings, I walk down Richmond’s Duke Street as I go to the gym. Apart from one house, its mishmash of otherwise nondescript buildings don’t merit a second look. The exception is Number 4 which was built in 1999 and which I love. It is a skinny building that is supported by four magnificent…