All over bar the shouting The results are in. I just don’t know what they are yet. It’s been really nice that people have wished me good luck, or reassured me about the odds of a good outcome. But it makes no difference to the answer. Nothing can change that. It is – as…
Category: Being Human
Peace amongst the Parasol Shadows
We were enjoying our annual winter break in the warmth of Tenerife. On Wednesday, we decided to relax by the pool later in the day, rather than straight after breakfast, which had been our habit. We surveyed the options for the best place to lie. With the sun lower in the sky and further round…
A Stroke of Insight – Shock, Calm, Caring and Mortality
My wife’s stroke was totally unexpected. By any reasonable measure she was right at the bottom of the risk ladder. But whilst the masses obediently follow statistics, life deals each one of us our own personal hand of cards with no apparent rhyme or reason. If we are lucky, we receive a flush of serendipitous…
A Stroke of Serendipity
Eight days ago at 12.32, I stepped outside and phoned my wife. Unusually for me I was in England – albeit 160 miles away in Southampton at my company’s UK offices. Two days earlier I had driven south from our home in the east midlands. Then I had flown to Guernsey flown back to Southampton…
Maybe its the Lure of the (Scandinavian) Sea
I spend my weeks traveling to and from various Nordic countries. Tired of the procession of planes and nights in formulaic hotels, I decided, for once, to take the big slow boat from Oslo to Copenhagen, only to discover that this was an amorphous mixture of the two. Everyone who boards is staying in the…
Once a Father, always a Father
“Once a father, always a father”. I read that in a book. Well, actually I read “once a mother, always a mother”, but I am translating it in the interests of gender-equality. If women can assert their equality in the work-place, then men should be allowed to assert their equality in the parent-place. In fact,…
Putting Insomnia to Bed
I am writing this at 4.49am, having been awake since 3.11am following about 3 hours of sleep. You may think this disqualifies me from having any wisdom about dealing with insomnia. But this has been an exception – and I blame it entirely on the course of steroids I have just started. The last ten…
A visit to Auschwitz
Originally posted on Unwrapping The World:
My thoughts on the trip Hannah and I made to Auschwitz and Birkenau in 2009. We arrived by bus from Krakow. It was a bright sunny day – one felt it would have been more appropriate to arrive in the cold and snow. We walked into the the museum,…
The end of the Christmas Twilight Zone
We are finally escaping the annual twilight zone between Christmas and New Year – those unnerving and unsettling 10 days when we are not quite sure where we are, what day it is, and what exactly we are meant to be doing. Are we to celebrate, relax, work or to make full and productive use of…
You say you want a Resolution?
We appear to be programmed with insatiable ambition and aspiration. We want to achieve – tick things off, get things done. Life without goals would be aimless and therefore, surely, pointless? We fear drifting from day to day without direction, without making progress. We feel the need to cross things off our bucket list. And…
Unwrapping The World 