Archive For The “But seriously..” Category
At least seventy years have gone by since I first discovered the delight of playing with language. The place was a sandy beach in Wales where, as a schoolboy on holiday, I chanced upon an old man – a native of the place, I believe – who sat there in the August sunshine reading poems…
Graham Dukes falls back on a long-dead poet to get him out of a tight spot… Let us get this straight. I am a Doctor of Medicine, with several framed diplomas on my wall to prove it. Unlike most medical doctors however, I decided at the start that I never wanted to make diagnoses, prescribe…
Eureka? Wasn’t that Archimedes’ cry of triumph, two-and-a-half millennia ago, when he jumped out of his hot bath in Syracuse to proclaim to all around that he had hit on the principle of specific gravity? Quite. Since then, the term has been sadly devalued, having been imposed on any number of real or supposed…
Do you daydream? I suspect you do, just now and again. Many of the people whom I know seem to meet with the temptation once in a long while, though they don’t all admit to it, let alone confess that they ever give way to it. But me – if truth be told, I must…
I had been forewarned about the opening scene a few weeks earlier when I bought our tickets. I was about to pay when the smiley face of the man in the box office suddenly turned serious. He looked me in the eyes and with great solemnity delivered a prepared statement: “I should warn you, the…
Henry Wedson was a clockmaker, and a picksome craftsman of the best sort, gifted with sharp eyes, agile fingers and an acute mind. I encountered him in his tranquil workplace in a Gloucester suburb forty years ago, and spent an unforgettable hour in his company. It is too often said that, living as we do…
I was in a world of my own, puzzling over my recent run of form at chess – when playing against Fahar [see Reopening Gambit, Greyhares blog, 28 January 2016] it was most unusual for me to win four games in a row. Suddenly, all became clear; my success was thanks to my bishops and the…
Those who read Greyhares will know that, when out in public, I am an inveterate chatterer. The content of my chat varies, covering anything from idle chit-chat, to serious debate, to the infamous imparting of unsolicited advice. To these more traditional categories, I have just added a fourth – the ‘avuncular chat’. Here, the purpose…
