Archive For The “Getting on with it” Category
Puzzling over accents gives me enormous pleasure. Trying to work out a person’s origins from their voice is an obsession [see In a manner of speaking Greyhares, 9 September 2012] and there is little more disquieting than hearing an accent that I cannot place, or one that jars. At the same time, disguising my own voice…
After closely observing my peers, I have concluded that when people retire their approach to life remains much the same as it did when they were earning – busy people stay busy and lazy people do rather little. During my own career I was actually too busy – some say a workaholic! My days were…
Graham Dukes and partner Elisabet Helsing have just produced a book… No, we must be truthful. All that we produced on our own was an electronic bundle of words and notions; to turn that into a book we were reliant on a creative and sympathetic publisher, a typesetter with nimble fingers, and a professional printer with…
There is something strangely appealing about the common mole. Indeed, she (and in France moles are generally thought of as female) has enough appeal to make her a fairy-tale favourite amongst children. Apart from her beautiful black pelt she is actually rather ugly with her protuberant fleshy nose, over-large pink front feet and silly short tail. When…
In a few days, on the 14 June to be precise, around two thousand men dressed up as soldiers will gather in Naseby, in the heart of England. There, they will form up as two opposing armies and do battle. It will be a festival of make-believe in which these soldiers re-enact a key battle…
After almost three hours’ work we stood in a row on the quayside waving her off. It was an emotional moment – at least for me. There was nobody on board the good ship Ann, no one to whom we were saying goodbye and no one to miss. It was just Ann herself and, anyway,…
The seasons reflect one of nature’s most spectacular rhythms. We are lucky that they differ greatly one from the other, each with its own particularities and its own advocates. As I see it, the best of them all is spring, which according to astronomers, started this year on March 20th. Spring is the season in which…
After a late start, I gradually learnt to cook and for years now I have shared the culinary responsibilities with my wife, herself an excellent cook in the French tradition. In our cooking we have always tried to follow that tradition, so get almost as much pleasure from choosing the menu, buying the ingredients and preparing and cooking…
