April 19, 2020
My daughter is learning to play the guitar and my son has grown a beard. It seems there is no end to the unusual things that might occur in a lockdown. “Every man should grow a beard at some point, just to show that he can,” I told him once. He had scoffed at the […]
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April 12, 2020
Walking the dog with my daughter she asks me if I will proofread her assignment. “Sure, what’s it about?” I ask “Milgram’s study of obedience,” she tells me. “The one where he convinces people to electrocute strangers when they get questions wrong? “Yep, that’s the one.” It feels like a study for our times when […]
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April 12, 2020
Having made the mistake of reading the news on my phone before even getting out of bed I find myself under a cloud. It’s hard sometimes to resist the gloom, and the irony of hankering after the days when all we had to worry about was Brexit is not lost on me. The last time […]
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March 29, 2020
My son turned 21 this week amidst scant celebration. He is not one to mope about feeling sorry for himself but it must have been tough spending his 21st with his parents. Inside his card, I wrote out one of my favourite poems, “The Orange” by Wendy Cope. It is an ode to the joy […]
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March 22, 2020
If I ever said “Mother’s Day” my mother would immediately correct me, “It’s Mothering Sunday” she would say, in a way which suggested she had reminded me more times than should strictly be necessary. She was very particular about certain things, mostly connected with the church, and utterly oblivious to others, such as leaving sufficient […]
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