It’s 10 years since I retired from the British Library. A decade indeed! In mid February I reached my 70th birthday: generally known as a milestone, and it certainly feels like it. Hard not to refer to my age when meeting ex-colleagues, as I did last week, one of whom I had not seen since…
"So, how are you?" goes the greeting. Most normal people automatically come back with something like, “Very well, and how are you?” Or, increasingly, “I’m good” - referring, one assumes, not to their moral condition but their physical well-being. But what if we took that question literally? People who know me say that I look…
I realise I am not going to get a lot of sympathy, but owning a second home brings a second set of problems. On our visit last month I was relieved to see that the builder had finally repaired the leaking roof of the lean-to, which back in November was causing rainwater to find its…
It's a year since my father died. A year to the day since I was advised to go immediately to his care home, because he had not long to live. In the end - because of late-running trains - I did not get there before Dad passed away. I arranged his funeral and reception, applied…
Fancy a foreign break? Who can blame us really when it is so wet and cold in Blighty. Just when you think things might be improving, a hailstorm crashes down. Merry month of May? If you want to get away, there are currently very few Government-approved destinations. There’s Australia and New Zealand (who clearly don’t…
Having lived in Wirral and Oxford until I was 22, I'd rarely travelled on the Tube until I started working in Upminster. Even then, I travelled mostly by bus or I walked. It took me a while to work out where the lines were connected, how to avoid the interchanges with the longest walks, and…
Of course there are more than a few. Ely, for example, which was an island back in the time of Hereward the Wake. Or the Isle of Dogs, more prosaically. But here I am referring to the gorgeous Isle of Purbeck. On the Bramble Bush Bay from Sandbanks to Shell Bay It does feel like…
Memories of 1980s Oxford, for the second time this month. In the same week in which I received an invitation to the Osma Centenary Symposium, Andrew informed me that he'd turned up a cassette tape from 1982 while looking (inevitably) for something else. He digitised it and emailed the result to Bernard and me. The…
I have been flying under the radar since I last posted (before Christmas). If that seems a long time ago, it's probably because it is. And starting a new year turns the previous year into ancient history. You buy a new calendar and throw the old one away. On the whole I was glad to…
I was 19 in 1974. The year began inauspiciously with the Three Day Week, power cuts, a miners’ strike and a General Election. It was a matter of debate whether Ted Heath’s government was really in power or just pretending. I can’t say it bothered me much, apart from when the pubs were shut. The…
The Wight Stuff 