My wife Jilly and I live in a small East Hertfordshire village. A bit too small, but that’s beside the point here and perhaps a topic to explore on another occasion. We are very conscious of our good fortune, and it was certainly an advantage during lockdown. One of the few things we were able
Do you suffer from earworms? Not Danny Kaye’s charming ‘Inchworm’, nor real worms of any kind, though if you do, I urge you to stop reading this straight away and send off an e-consult request (don’t wait until you can get a GP appointment). The earworms I’m talking about are those relentless little audio snippets
Earworm, Earworm . . . Read More »
Have you ever lost anything? I mean something you’ve written, spent hours crafting and worrying about over a long time, and eventually finished with satisfaction and a sense of achievement. I’ve recently done exactly this: a short piece about my discovery over 25 years ago of The Parish Lantern, a popular shop and café in
Life’s Labour Lost Read More »
One day during lockdown I attended a funeral, if ‘attended’ is the right word in this context. Times being as they were, it was online; not with the ubiquitous Zoom, but via a password-protected link to the crematorium chapel webcam. No funeral is a joyous occasion; especially when, as in this case, the deceased’s life
Language changes. Writers and academics are all realistic and know this; after all, nothing in life stays the same forever. Change is as inevitable as birth, death and a Tory election triumph. This clearly is also true of language, otherewyse we al wolde speke to-day thas weies.¹ But we also know that change is the
Raising my Standard Read More »
