Am happy to report my friends have returned from Mumbai ans that all-in-all they had a lovely couple of weeks holiday. One of the highlights was going to a village in Matheran, an out of the way stop-over in the hills which has no roads and no electricity. It is probably something of a dream…
John Clare
All Nature has a Feeling All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks Are life eternal: and in silence they Speak happiness beyond the reach of books; There’s nothing mortal in them; their decay Is the green life of change; to pass away And come again in blooms revivified. Its birth was heaven, eternal it…
Technically Bankcrupt
If you, like me, have watched the paroxysms and ‘o’er vaulting’ the leaders of the world have been going through since the ‘banking crisis’ hit, from the outside you could be forgiven for wondering what exactly maintains this crisis. As countries slide down the scale of viability you could be forgiven for asking, just how…
Unbound Books
This recent concept (launched in May 2011) at the Hay Festival brings writers closer to readers by enabling readers to choose between suggested ideas for a book and to follow its progress even suggesting ideas for that book’s content as it grows. My friends think this is a brilliant idea that enables a greater number…
Upstairs or Downstairs
Many years ago they did a programme in the UK going through the day-to-day routine of an Edwardian kitchen and they had as their guide a lady who had been trained as a cook and worked for a family. At the end of the series they asked her what she would most want if she…
Celebrations
Last month across India they celebrated Diwali and in a few days in the UK we are firing off fireworks left,right and centre to remember Guy Fawkes and later this November is Thanksgiving in the USA. Throughout the year there are thousands of celebrations all over the world which aim, apart from making lonely people…
Leap of Faith
One of the most significant developments in the written word was the placing of a space after each word. Something you would not even think about today but it does make all the difference to the ease of reading. But the difference between what we don’t think about because it seems so natural, and when…
Knowledge Of Others
When I was learning about Gandhi it was a critique of his method to say that he knew the British. If he had been seeking freedom from the Nazi mentality thousands would have died in like fashion to the massacre at Amritsar. Gandhi it was said, knew his enemy and in this knowledge lay the…
Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although…
The Seriousness of Comedy
They say that to play the piano badly but nonetheless take the audience and tune with you, you actually need to be a very good pianist. Likewise in a world where there is little true comedy it takes someone who knows about the seriousness of life to pull out the nuggets of laughter and show…