Last week I spotted Gordon across the street doing his weekend shopping. I announced myself, and conversation flowed. Gordon is blind, so conversation is a little different from that with my other friends because we cannot make eye contact (indeed I rarely look at his eyes) and he cannot read my body language. However with…
Watching the white wheat
Last week I received an unexpected email. "Dear Joe, I've recorded one of the Welsh folk songs that I've been singing recently. You can hear it via the link below..." I listened, and what a treat it was. Not just because of the beauty of the singer's unaccompanied voice (click here to listen to Bugeilio'r gwenith gwyn first…
Life’s little irritants
Phil Gould gets really rather ratty. Is it a sign of his rage? So what is it that really annoys you? What is it that sends you into a spasm of seethe or a descent into a slough of sulk – apart, that is, from reading a blog commencing with a raft of rhetoric or indeed…
Why bother?
As I was leaving a neighbour's house last week something sharp scratched my knuckle. The culprit was the head of screw. For such a commonplace thing, the humble screw comes in a rich variety of forms - length, width, head shape, drive form (slotted, Philips, Torx), thread geometry and in the material from which it…
Vanity fare
I was sitting in the underground reading a newspaper and minding my own business. It was rush hour with many passengers standing, leaving those seated in that strange, and somewhat childlike position of being in an underworld surrounded by anonymous legs, backpacks, handbags or perhaps an overgenerous coat. Identifying to whom they belonged was out…
Look back in Bognor
My tally for items lost in the last 12 months has just reached five. The outcomes have been varied - a mobile phone left on a bench was returned two weeks later after negotiating with an anonymous man and giving a ‘goodwill’ payment of £20. A cherished umbrella left hanging over a billboard in Oxford Street…
Just pretending
Right up to my teenage years reciting a poem out loud or acting in the school play were essentially impossible. Learning lines was difficult enough but even if the words were memorised, the presence of an audience would strike me dumb. Performance and I were incompatible. Similarly, pretence and deceit were an anathema. One of…
Tangled up in blue
Can white men sing the blues? There's clearly no point in asking guest contributor Neil Taylor... I was going to take my small son to the Science Museum to meet up with one of his older siblings and my wife was attempting to dress him for the journey. She called up the stairs to me, asking would…