Politics-free Zone

It’s totally mad . Here we are almost nearing the end of October and it’s still as mild as it was in August . In fact, the sky is clearer and much less gloomy and depressing than it was in August past. It’s getting a little wilder though but the wind is still warm. I […]

“Don’t Shoot , It’s Only Me” is the title of a  hardback book  of Bob Hope musings  on comedy and history , published in 1990. My father and mother were never gulled by celebrity nor were they remotely materialistic, but they lived through the dawn of the cinema and were every bit in thrall to […]

Let’s get one thing straight before we begin . It’s not the bees’ fault. Right ? The reason I’m sitting here like Charles Laughton as Quasimodo  with my eye expanded like a duck egg with a fine red line dividing it neatly in two. I’m sitting here listening to the radio wondering if I’m in […]

Winter  came creeping and arrived by stealth when I was away for a long weekender in Liverpool. Getting off the plane , you could feel it in the air.A degree or two lower in temperature. The week before, we had been enjoying an extended Summer/Autumn. The sun  was still shining .It hadn’t rained. Apparently it […]

The first smoke I ever had was a Gallaher Blues  untipped . My father smoked them back in the 1950’s and 1960’s when smoking was really good for you and film stars and pop stars chuffed away with great gusto and abandon. They were advertised everywhere and every schoolboy worth his salt had to learn […]

. By Randall Stephen Hall. Just click this link . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoC8pjLBpcU   (Lullabye to a couple of ogres).   CHORUS.   Red white and blue now. Green white and gold. All of these colours They’re so very old. You can’t own a colour. No woman or man. For if you do now You […]

Is Prime Minister Cameron going to announce “No benefits for school leavers before they are twenty one”? Did I hear that right? I was sitting here wondering will this mizzly, misty  day  burn off and unveil a little late September sunshine. It’s been so unseasonalby warm and humid this past week or so and of […]

With talks about new talks and our local politicians talking again about why they shouldn’t talk, what they need to talk and who they are prepared to talk to, it puts me in mind of what we are blessed with, as a gift. It all comes pre-packaged, when we are born, and, with careful nurturing […]

Does anyone really watch television anymore? I’m only asking because  I am finding it more and more a pointless pursuit.Let’s put it like this .There are two televisions in my home .There’s the wee one in the kitchen area where we seem to spend virtually all our time anyway and then there’s the big screen […]

Now , there’s a curious slice , hacked out fairly cack-handedly from the logical pie; an episode  worthy of an Orwell dystopia. Let me explain . I am, and have always been a music lover. I listen to all kinds of music. To me , the Beatles and the Stones can sit easily beside Satie […]