The Joe Collier Blog

Over the years my sleep pattern has hardly changed. Just as I did in my twenties, I go to bed between 10.30 and 11.00pm and am usually asleep within 15 minutes. Then, at 5.00am - never later than 6.30 - I get up to work - which most often involves writing. My night’s six hours have…

I may be imagining things but colours mean more to me now than I can ever remember. I have always been aware of colours, and of patterns in particular, but now they feel vibrant, defined and captivating. In addition, over the summer they have started to demand my attention. From the simplest to the most elaborate, all have become important, although…

We all get talked about - it’s a key part of how society ticks. Whether musings are amongst friends, neighbours, family or work colleagues, once in a while one’s name crops up. It is rare to discover what exactly is said but, over the years, comments about me, for example, have ranged from tittle-tattle, to…

July this year was very special. Apart from being one of the hottest months in history and the month in which Boris Johnson ‘resigned’, it was also when England hosted, and then won the EUFA Women’s European Football Championship.I love watching sport on the television, in fact, nowadays I spend more time looking at sport…

One of the great pleasures of staying in Tréguennec is eating meals in the garden. We sit at a lovely wooden table at the back of the house from where we look down over a sloping lawn with its quirkily curved path - a hand-me-down from the previous owners. To the right is tall mock-orange…

After months of waiting, our grandson River, and his Dad, Joshua, came to stay. It has been three years since their previous holiday with us in Treguennec. On that trip River was a toddler; now we were entertaining an inquisitive and talkative four-and-half year old brimful of ideas. Our preparation for their visit started in…

A few years ago the chapel opposite our cottage in Brittany was deconsecrated. In no time, Denis, the eccentric and widely loved handyman who worked for the Mairie*, had converted it into a public amenity with the nave a meeting room-cum-exhibition space and the chancel a kitchen and toilet. Outside, he built a ramp for…

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II certainly deserves congratulations - living for ninety-six years, of which seventy have been as Head of State, is an extraordinary achievement. In its coverage of the celebrations the media told how different people have been touched by her reign. This blog is about two such occasions that affected me: both occurred at my workplace - St George’s Hospital…

Most of the garden at our cottage in Brittany is carefully tended. We are not meticulous but when we are living there - nearly half the year -  it gets hours of attention almost everyday. There is, however, an exception; apart from a serious autumn strimming, the meadow near the bottom of the garden is…

This blog is about three men who, between the mid 1950s and the early 1970s, became entangled in the machinery of the Secret Service. Politically, it was a difficult period. In the USA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believed that the fabric of the country was threatened by Communism, socialism and, to an extent,…