The Making

In Belize in 1973 when I was briefly in the army, the Army Air Corps choppered me around in a Sioux helicopter – one with the glass bubble. It was fun but it was an opportunity to observe the landscape.

It’s Not Unusual

BBC Parliament is a favourite channel so when Robert was out I thought I’d see if Bertie would enjoy it as much as me. We kicked off with a Bill in the House of Lords introduced by Lord “Big Issue” Bird about poverty.

Published
Categorised as Politics

An Old Hand

How long should one work? How long is a piece of string? Some people (including me) slip gratefully into early retirement, others like their jobs so much they never want to retire.

Published
Categorised as Music

Off to Sunny Spain

Books describing the authors’ walking trips are a genre I find irresistible. Today I want to narrow down the field to 20th century accounts of walks in just one country.

Permission to Park

The “new” car is the fifth I have owned. A lot has changed in the nineteen years since I last bought one.

The Cranford Protocol

In ten years I will have forgotten that TV licences for 75 year-olds were once buckshee but anytime now I will mourn, selfishly, the revocation of the Cranford Protocol.

A New PM

Last night five of the six contenders to be Prime Minister were interviewed on a TV Channel that I hadn’t watched for so long that I didn’t know the password.

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Categorised as Politics

Carbon Admissions

Yesterday I mentioned three revelations from Personal Assets Trust and forgot to tell you the third. It discloses its carbon emissions, not something I associate with an investment trust that has nine employees, excluding directors.

Busted Flushes

At the MP Evans AGM yesterday I couldn’t think of a good question to ask. What a difference a day makes.

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Categorised as Business

Happy Birthday

Yesterday a friend sent me an article from The New York Times celebrating the centenary of the Negroni cocktail, invented by Count Camillo Negroni at his local caffè in Florence in 1919.