Archive For The “The way it is” Category
They used to say – and perhaps they still do – that when you tackle something in a roundabout manner you are going “all around the Wrekin.” Somehow, it seems to be happening to me all the time nowadays, in one way or another, indoors and out, talking or acting, and I simply can’t help…
I loathe plastic. I detest plastic. I even… No, before I become downright abusive, I must put a question or two to the reader. Tell me: did anybody ever love plastic? Or even admire it? Did anybody even ask for it? Not that I know of. It was simply there, all of a sudden, dumb and…
It started with a shriek. A shriek that became an itch, an itch that gave me the germ of an idea that became the Greyhares blog. The shriek came from the direction of the shower one morning in late October 2009. My wife had noticed that Pears soap, a soap we’d both been using since…
While the invaders in our Brittany garden were welcomed by my wife they had me in a real spin. I am a very tidy gardener, not to say obsessional, and in my view these six, albeit very imposing invaders simply got in the way. They would have seeded themselves in the spring and by the…
Although it hurts me to say it, after years of believing myself to be quiet and unsociable, I have had to accept that this may not accord with reality. It would seem that, if anything, a more apt description might be gregarious and talkative. It is true that I will speak to complete strangers, asking…
A perplexed Charles de Gaulle once asked “How can one govern a nation that has 246 varieties of cheese?”. That was in 1962. Since then the position for French presidents has worsened. An estimate by their minister of agriculture suggests that the number of cheeses now exceeds 3500, and in late June, on a visit…
Driving a car is full of challenges and on this particular occasion Janine, who is in her sixties, was at the wheel. Her driving is typically calm and careful; she is certainly not a risk-taker. The driver in front suddenly applied his brakes, and in seconds Janine’s demeanour changed. She lowered her window, stared…
It was probably in the late 1980s that I became aware of the word ‘openness’. That is, openness as it relates to governments and large organisations. It seems to me that it arrived from Russia in the form of Gorbachev’s glasnost. Whatever its origins it was a concept, particularly as it related to drug companies,…
