There’s rather a lot to tell you this year, but as usual, I’ll limit myself to 2000 words and see how much I can cover. Communications are big this year, since both Geraldine and I became smartphone users. Geraldine started it off when she saw the benefit of responding to emails ‘on the go’, and […]
I hope that in this poor economic climate, this card and letter finds you safe, secure and content. This time last year, Geraldine’s job was under threat, and so, as a form of insurance, she decided to branch out in a new direction and became trained as a marriage celebrant. This is something that she […]
This year, I have some very sad news to start with: Geraldine’s Mum, who had been suffering from cancer for some time, finally lost her battle in July this year after a short stay in St Catherine’s Hospital. She was cheerful early Friday evening when we saw her, but by 9pm she had suffered a […]
Well, it’s early December and I am once more bemoaning the anticipation of the end of yet another year whilst I have barely got used to the new one. The ‘noughties’ are coming to an end, to be replaced with… what? Has anyone yet decided what the next decade will be called? The ‘teenies’? I […]
This year’s most annoying phrase has to be ‘going forward’. I listen to the Today programme every morning and almost without fail, some politician or other will say something like “Of course, going forward what we shall do is…”. In my day, time only ever went forward, so the phrase was never required, but there […]
It’s been a rather difficult year for me, because as some of you will know, I lost my Mum in early autumn. She had been getting progressively more poorly since she turned 80 last year, but in the spring she suffered a stroke which set her back significantly and appeared to take away her formerly […]
It’s turned December, it’s raining and I’ve a couple of hours to wait before I can put the final coat of paint on the wall I’ve just decorated, so this is an ideal time to look back on the year and think about what you, the reader, might find interesting amongst the cliché-ridden self-referential balderdash […]
Thursday 9th November 2006 I was taking a party of about 30 people on a Ghost Tour when several events occurred which ostensibly appear fairly innocuous, but when coupled with reports from other people who were also there begin to appear quite extraordinary. I shall initially relate the facts and no more, and afterwards I […]
I find myself once more sat at the PC wondering how best to keep in touch with distant friends accumulated over the years in a way that is more than just a scrawled signature on a card. (You’ve got that anyway!) So it’s back to the old newsletter to give you a flavour of what […]
For a while I have liked the saying “Every young person is just an older person waiting to happen”. Well, this year, a TV series featuring a number of men of a certain age grumbling about modern society made me wonder whether the older person in me is making an appearance. Very worryingly, I found […]