This sneaked into my inbox the other day from my home contents insurers. Can I go to the website and deselect auto renewal? Can I buggery! I have to slalom through the maze of phone flow-chartitude we’ve all come to … Read More »
Michaelmas Day is when the Archangel Michael ejected his colleague Lucifer – a shady type known to use aliases and adept at blending in with the crowd – from Heaven. It’s also my birthday. A gorgeous day as it happens. … Read More »
Through the pines. Over the dunes. And onto the beach, the light in constant flux … … an Atlantic north-westerly ripping in relentless. “I’m going out”, said J, pushing through piles of sand outside our bedouin tent. “I may be … Read More »
I spoke in Afloat in the Fens of a brace of pike spotted in a small mere, amid an otherwise banal housing estate on the edge of Thrapston and fed by the Nene. Here they are. Close by, another ambush … Read More »
It’s a scorching afternoon, still and sultry. A minute after putting in at Islip, I disturb a grey heron. It flaps a gawky take off across the river twenty metres ahead. Ten minutes after that I hear a tiny plash … Read More »
Needing spiritual refreshment after two months making repairs to my house in Sheffield (I let it out, and hand over the rent collected to my own landlord) and a recent flurry of posts on Julian Assange, I took the junior … Read More »
As lockdown closed sports stadiums across Britain, BBC rugby commentator Nick Heath took to our parks and streets with his smartphone, professional skills and quintessentially English wit. Try his instant classic, Two Lonely Blokes in a Park … … the … Read More »
It’s the last Thursday of June, the hottest day of the year so far. Patrolling the sky above Barton Broad a pair of common terns glide, hover and swoop for small fry. I’m in the shade of willow and alder, … Read More »
Mathematician and astronomer Fred Hoyle rejected the big bang theory (coining that term in a radio interview put-down) in favour not of creationism but of panspermia – the idea that life on earth originated in micro-organisms arriving from outer space. … Read More »
Spotted in today’s Economist … (Not that this is particularly French or particularly new …)