IT’S THE BLANK page which causes all the trouble. Or the blank screen with the vertical flickering text bar. Crying out to be filled like a hungry dog in the back streets of Sorrento it needs to be silenced with some crumbs of creatively-inspired comfort. One solution is to dredge the swirling wells of experience [...]
• THERE ARE more than 2,000 species of toenail. • Toenails are so called because they 1) originate on toes and 2) were used as nails before nails were invented. In fact the Great Pyramid of Cheops is held together by no fewer than one billion, billion individual toenails, many believed to ave been clipped [...]
THE STONES ATTRACT pagans, mystics, England football fans and other types with a slim grasp on reality. Politicians, Big Brother contestants, Alan Titchmarsh and blogging ‘experts’ all gather to worship the rising and setting of the sun on the longest day. It’s a ritual whose origins are lost in the dim distant mists of time. [...]
The Duvet Factory Girl NOTHING EVER HAPPENED to Jim Collins. Nothing, that is, apart from commuting into work at the bank and commuting back. Five days a week, then a weekend taken up with the lads down the pub. And Sunday spent recovering and regaining any reserves of strength to start the whole cycle all [...]
IT WAS WHILE I was lying in a painful, twisted heap on the floor, during my yoga class, that I suddenly wondered whatever happened to an old friend. He is a rake-thin, wiry chap so it was probably the apparent flexibility of his body that brought him to mind at that particular moment. Trevor Herstmonceux [...]
YOUR DAILY LIFE is punctuated by a series of unbidden pronouncements, commands and warnings. Wherever you go you are warned to ‘keep off the grass’, ‘clean up after your dog’ (even if you only have a goldfish) and to not ‘play ball games’. It seems nigh on impossible to walk for five minutes without receiving [...]
THE SYMPOSIUM of Significance took place in Stuttgart at the weekend with many of the greatest names in thinking sharing their thoughts. The recent real life crises of volcanic ash disrupting air travel, Thai rebels in Bangkok and Cheryl Cole’s divorce were mulled over, debated and broken down into elemental philosophical formulae. Furtenburg said that [...]
THERE WAS A Peach Melba once that has never been equalled. I had it as a boy during a Christmas trip to Paris. The details of the drive to Paris, the hotel, the shops, The Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and Midnight Mass at The Notre Dame Cathedral are all as nothing [...]
I had the most embarrassing experience recently. You might think I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but, at the time I felt I was teetering on the edge of the Grand Canyon. There might have been greater misdemeanours in the history of mankind, but this suburban debacle threatened our friendship with Paula [...]
Trousers are very interesting. I’m wearing a pair even as I type this. They are very useful for covering the lower parts of the body for those occasions when it is unsuitable to be seen walking around town in just a string vest. You can have long trousers which come down to just above the [...]