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…
In the aspect of the beholder
Until recently our feelings about views have usually differed. While my wife loves ‘untouched’ expanses of nature, the Cairngorms for example with not a house in sight, or miles of Atlantic rollers, my breath is taken away by man-made structures. The Roman aqueduct at Nimes blew my mind when I was a teenager, and for…
Carry on nurse
In Fulham Palace Road, the darkest hour is just before dawn, says Philip McGough. I had bragged that I would be fitted with a titanium alloy hip of space satellite quality to return me to Fred Astaire class mobility. On returning from hospital I announced that I now had a ceramic hip joint. My children,…
Back to the elements
Our recent holiday in Kenya was special. And we, to be more precise I, went with serious concerns. The UK had declared that civil unrest made the country unsafe for holidaymakers. Friends warned us about the dual dangers of altitude and buffalo - unlike lions and elephants, buffalo are plain spiteful. And research on the…
Fleeting memory
‘Quick’. ‘Look’. ‘Top of the trellising’. And there they were, just two metres away, a pair of goldfinches. I knew that they were around, we had talked about them often, but this was the first time I had actually seen them, and in our own garden too. They were small (shorter than a robin), and…
Line of most resistance
It was a lovely spring afternoon and I sat sipping tea in the conservatory, calculating the amount of my time I spend procrastinating. The task was prompted by the sight of shirts, towels and smalls fluttering prettily on a washing line that I had just put up; a job that took 3 years. In the…
Spellbound
Though I have a lot of time for the written word, for me the appeal of the spoken word is the greater. Ideas from a good talk, lecture, or even a chat get into my mind with minimum interference. And spoken commentary has an immediacy that is seductive. Moreover, with talking there is the added…
Touching moments
There are a lot of special things about South Kensington tube station. First, it simply has history. The London Underground was the world’s first public underground service and South Ken one of its original stations - witness the bold, mid 1860s, wrought iron lettering over the entrance. Second, and at a more personal level, South…