Category: Feature

Arguing with teabags

I only wanted a fruit tea, not a transcendent experience In the Old Days (think black-and-white 405 lines TV) PG Tips never tried to sell us a lifestyle, unless it was the prospect of the chaos of a chimps’ tea party. But increasingly the groceries are trying to make me a better person. Don’t get… Continue reading Arguing with teabags

When I was Ten

Jump to it! Your World of Adventure – in Living Colour! I am writing this on my eldest grandson’s 10th birthday. What was I doing when I was ten? One thing I am certain of: I was reading Tell Me Why magazine, which may be the source of most of the general knowledge that I… Continue reading When I was Ten

Charged with meaning

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. Ezra Pound (How To Read, 1931) The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (Vintage 2020/2022) Who write’s the dictionary? Who decides which words are included and which excluded? Whose language is it, anyway? This wonderful novel is anchored in the real… Continue reading Charged with meaning

Thinking Differently

Thoughts in Mental Health Awareness Week 9-15 May 2022 Fear of the unknown When I was in my teens I was afraid. Unnerved by what and who I did not know, and unsettled by media’s reflex association between mental illness and violence (which still persists in the lazy tabloids). In my ignorance these feelings were… Continue reading Thinking Differently

King Alfred to Alien

Cobbles with added wheatgerm.

Via Jude the Obscure and Hovis No-one knows exactly when, but around the year 888, Alfred the great king of the Anglo-Saxons founded an abbey and set up his daughter Æthelgifu there as Abbess. It became in time a powerful institution, home to several memorable and influential English women. And at one stage it was… Continue reading King Alfred to Alien

Telling Africa’s story

Inventing Africa is the title of a fascinating book by Robin Derricourt. It traces several themes of how outsiders have told the history of Africa in order to bolster their own worldview. There are terrific examples of archaeologists who have either contrived to present evidence to suit their own agendas or challenged the prevailing views… Continue reading Telling Africa’s story

Star of wonder, star of light

This is a short book – you could read it in an evening – and doesn’t need any hard science to understand. There are no equations or even pictures, but he explains some tremendous concepts in astrophysics, cosmology, plate tectonics and particle physics with infectious enthusiasm.

New Horizons – Old Harmonies

[Originally written for New Zenith, newsletter of the Vectis Astronomical Society, 3 January 2019] Early on New Year’s Day [2019], the New Horizons spacecraft successfully achieved its long anticipated flyby of Ultima Thule. At about 43 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, this was the furthest encounter yet with an object in… Continue reading New Horizons – Old Harmonies