8th December, 2023

Friday again and, once again, I feel as though I am late with my homework!  Why?  It's just gone 5pm, as I sit down at my desk, and I have successfully procrastinated all day.  Not that I haven't been productive, just not productive in the way I'm supposed to be...

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1st December, 2023

Well, that's this year's Christmas Number One taken care of - Fairytale of New York.  In this woke climate, I'm almost scared to say I can't stand it!  Not that I don't like the tune and the folk influence, I do, and it's all good until Shane MacGowan and Kirsty...

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24th November, 2023

Black Friday.  Excellent.  It's November, it's freezing, energy prices are set to rise again in January, First Class stamps are £1.25 and it's Black Friday!  Who needs it?!  The scammers, I suppose.  Bombarded by emails for weeks, now, one would hope that your average...

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19th November, 2023

Just who can one rely on these days?!  I was doing so well, too, until it all went pear-shaped.   Apologies.  Two days late, maybe even three by the time I have finished this, my promised Friday deadline has been and gone.  This afternoon, however, I decided to pop...

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10th November, 2023

Help!  Still here but doing my best to fulfil my promise to post on a Friday.  Just nipped down to the little boutique hotel down the road from Becca's apartment - too close and too easy - where I thought I could sit and have a Cappuccino in daylight (Becca's...

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3rd November, 2023

So much of life passes one by.  It's the little things, the everyday things one takes for granted and then, all of a sudden, they're gone and one realises how important they really were ... I have been in Naples this week.  Sipped cocktails on the terrace overlooking...

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27th October, 2023

Ah, to think this is 2023 and it still takes virtually a day's travel to fly from Scotland to Rome.  Such progress!  I mean, let's face it, Edinburgh Airport now looks as though it was thrown together by the same person who 'designed' Tarzan's Lair - or, officially,...

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20th October, 2023

'Ich bin ein Berliner.' My thought was to avoid politics today but something happened on the way to the forum, as it were ...  Celebrity Race Across the World, to be precise.  Television (terrestrial) is, in the main, dire as everyone knows and, thus, it was without...

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13th October, 2023

Friday, 13th - again.  Is it just me or does it just feel as though the 13th always falls on a Friday?  Am I superstitious?  No, I wouldn't say so but then, again, why tempt fate?  If there's a ladder in my way, then I will walk round it.  The thought of breaking a...

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6th October, 2023

Blank page and no idea how I'm going to fill it.  Unusual for me.  As I type the date, however, I am reminded that it is October.  My favourite month.  Somehow, though, it seems to have come round so rapidly.  No build-up, no suspense, just here I am!  So, we had no...

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29th September, 2023

A three-hundred-year-old Sycamore tree was mindlessly felled under cover of darkness two night ago.  Part of history, this tree flourished in the shadow of Hadrian's Wall in a valley which was subsequently named Sycamore Gap.  Until yesterday, an iconic landmark -...

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22nd September, 2023

I hate to begin by letting my readers down but, following on from last week and my gripping piece on dentists and teeth, I did promise - well, maybe a bit strong - infer that, today, I would be discussing feet in relation to the individual, and the preservation of.  I...

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‘You’re only given a little spark of madness and, if you lose that, you’re nothing.’

Robin Williams