Intelligence, until the advent of artificial intelligence, has always been an attribute describing a human being, or a living creature. In recent years I have observed that adjective ‘intelligent’ has been applied to a number of inanimate objects. For example, [...]
A few days ago, I retired from work - my final occupation, my last job. I had orchestrated my exit, set everything in order and handed responsibility over - it all felt quite satisfying. I received a few cards and [...]
For some years I have been a member of a small painting group in Dorset and each summer we hold an annual Summer Exhibition in Milton Abbas. Last year in 2020 it was cancelled owing to the pandemic, but this year [...]
I wonder who is responsible for putting together online all the quotations on hundreds of different words and topics, and how accurate the attributions are. Recently I came across a whole slew of them on the subject of Change. Some [...]
Spring is here and we are all wishing that the pandemic would just go away. We keep being told that it will, but somehow it still goes on and people are still suffering and dying. So sad. Sometimes we just [...]
I must have been feeling hungry the other morning while I was lying half asleep in bed, as I was dreaming about my home-made bread and eating a slice of toast with honey or butter (but not both – one [...]
In many cultures rainbows are a symbol of hope. They appear sometimes as perfect arcs, often during a rainstorm, when the sun shines onto water droplets, shattering its white light into an array of brilliant colours. Everyone loves a rainbow. It produces that frisson of [...]
As a writer and a reader, I was saddened in particular by the closure of bookshops during the summer lockdown, but I don’t think this meant that people read less. Although we were denied the enjoyment of browsing in our [...]
I am full of admiration for the fortitude of individuals who have been on their own this summer, confined to their homes and gardens. Solitude can be a blessing if it is a choice, but enforced isolation is not congenial [...]
I love owls. We live in the countryside, surrounded by fields with sheep, rabbits, mice and the occasional fox, and woods with deer, a few badgers and masses of birds which also inhabit our garden. Sometimes at dusk, we listen to owls hooting across the woods and fields, and [...]