When cycling near my cottage in Brittany my mind often conjures up images of German soldiers. In the Second World War there were many thousands stationed thereabouts. I see them in their ones and twos strutting along roads and across fields in their 1940s uniforms. No doubt these persistent images would have been seeded in…
In a manner of speaking
The minute I hear a voice on the phone I try to guess who is speaking. For close friends, just the briefest of sounds will be enough - so just the 'hell' of 'hello' - and getting it right gives me a real buzz. It is an odd pastime but in my case one born…
Après le déluge, moi
Our dinner together that Thursday was special. Not only was it my wife's birthday, albeit celebrated two days late, but we both had lived to share the occasion. Her actual birthday had been lost during a hectic and horrible 24 hours earlier in the week. We were still on our holiday in France. At around…
Singing for Dr Zamenhof
It was the spring of 1944; one could discern the season as one glimpsed the young leaves hesitantly peeping out from the trees that lined the tramway along the Bristol Road. Beyond that, Birmingham remained its proud but grimy old self, much as Victorian industry had left it, licking its wounds now from the Blitz…
This orderly life
Some people are neat and tidy. So when my wife asks if I could bring her a blouse or some socks or whatever from her wardrobe, I know that I am about to be shamed. Everything on the shelves or in the drawers is laid out carefully, folded neatly and arranged logically. And the same…
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…
Organ recitals
Concerns about illness are normal at my age. In fact, they are so everyday that symptoms are discussed by guests around the dinner table in the now customary 'organ recital' slot. Chronic symptoms are in some ways old friends. It is the new ones that raise alarms. Do they herald something sinister? Will they get…
Life in Venus
Some weeks ago my wife gave me a postcard. She had bought it after visiting our local museum of regional history and the picture was of a slim, young, nude, woman. She was made of terracota, was about 20 cms high and around two thousand years old. In keeping with her demeanor, the legend on…