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…
Look back in Bognor
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…
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…
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…
Collector’s peace
Last week some 250 friends gathered in my study. Until then they had been sitting on tabletops or in dusty cabinets or variously packed away in suitcases, boxes and plastic bags. We had been separated for anything from weeks, to months and years. But on that Friday morning we (that is, me and my elephant collection)…
Font of wisdom
There are two key givens in employment. First, it is the employer who pays; second it is the employer who decides what is to be done. Well, that is the theory. When we employed a local engraver, things did not go exactly to plan... During our first holidays in Tréguennec, goods, guests, and even letters…
The constant hammer
For years three questions have haunted me but now I am down to two. I still do not know why the chicken crossed the road; I have not resolved whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first (based on Aristotelian principles I am told it is the chicken) but I do agree…
The bliss of solitude
One great difference between full time work and retirement has been the amount of time I spend alone. As a doctor and teacher I had a career that involved working closely with people and during my last years at work almost every hour was spent in the company of others. Mostly it was with individuals…
Let them drink tea
What's all this? Joe Collier finds it much easier to create the perfect afternoon tea ritual in France than in England. For around three months each year I live abroad in France, and when away, the ritual afternoon tea gives moments of great pleasure. Preparation begins at around 4.30, so before the 5.00 caffeine watershed. Centre stage…
Who am I?
Post election, we find Joe Collier in an introspective mood.. I value change greatly. As I age I look back and delight in how I have and can change, and that this is still going on. Indeed I treasure this capacity. In the last three years I have lost a great deal of influence but this…
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