Alan West tries to break the habit of a lifetime When a friend asked me to join his new club, I admit I was a little dubious. What sort of a club? I asked. Well, it’s a bit like a Women’s Book Club. My friend had been impressed by his wife’s book club, which meets…
Dreaming spires
Leaving the dock behind us, We sped out into the Venice lagoon. The airport receded. I picture you perched in the back of the water taxi in a dappled patch of sunshine, trying to keep your hair from flying. The Russian girl (she said her name was Alexandra) all in black, let hers go with…
London Brick
I knew every inch of this house, he had said, passing a shaky hand over the wall by his bed. Grandfather, you can’t smoke your tobacco in here. You know what the doctor said. There, I’ve opened the window for you. After the stroke, that last time, when words had failed him, he had scratched…
Incatitude
Alan West resorts to "Cat Stuck On Roof" story. If you want unquestioning devotion they say, get yourself a dog. I’m all in favour of unquestioning devotion and I rather admire dogs, but I wouldn’t want one in the house. So we have a cat instead. What I like about cats is their pragmatism and…
Teenage love poem
I can see it now-- the Chaldon Village Hall Coats to the left, backs to the wall “Baby Love” blasting through a crack in the door And not getting home ‘til a quarter to four. Oh ramshackle hut, roof painted green Parents OK, they’ll know where you’ve been. A table set up for collecting the…
A winter’s tale
Alan West has a crack at predicting the past. Yogi Berra the American baseball star of the fifties and sixties (and not the cartoon bear of similar name), once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” He also famously said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” and “It’s like déjà vu, all…
Saved by Art
Alan West detects the pungent smell of a bandwagon. The London Olympics have been a triumph. Only the meanest, most grudging curmudgeon or somebody who has been up the Orinoco without a paddle, or a TV or any other means of communication could deny that. For me, it started very late - with the opening…
Reasons to be cheerful
A couple of 'newsy' things have escaped comment in this blog over the past few months. Since both news items are reasons to be cheerful they must not go unremarked. The first (though not necessarily in the order it happened) was the promotion of Joe Collier from BMJ journeyman blogger to Guest Blogger of the…