I am one of those who found nothing surprising in the candid comments made by ambassadors to the State Department, in fact a lack of candour would have been very worrying. However there is a difference between having the sense to know these things are ‘probably’ being said and having the hard evidence set before…
Seasons
As everyone knows by now winter has come early to the UK and far from me at the moment, people are struggling to get through the snow and ice to school and work. In the old days when communities were communities, people just closed the front door and gathered around a fire and kept warm…
Land Rights
There is a movement in the UK as yet small but showing promise because it works, to encourage landowners to let out some land at a small or no fee, to people who want to have well run and productive allotments. The idea of empowering people to grow their own varieties of food, to get…
How To Give Advice
Firstly one should never give advice and if all objections and excuses have failed and you are pushed to it despite valiant efforts to the contrary the best way to proceed is as follows: Always sound confident, as though you have given this same advice before many times and to the best of your knowledge…
Good Luck Charms
There is, along a shelf of books in our house, a series of elephants bought by my mother over the years after she heard they were considered to be good luck in India. Black and brown wood, plastic, ivory (in India generally Elephants’ tusks are cut down like nails to regrow and elephants are not…
Diaries
There are amongst ancient writers names that we know but for whom we have no written works. Sometimes we have a good idea of how they were thought of but all their work is lost and even for the greats we do know, we don’t have all their works. Very rarely amongst the archeology suddenly…
Defining Clothes
It is impossible for me to think about Rome without thinking about togas, or envisage a Greek without seeing a hoplite and understanding that whilst these clothes are so redolent of the ‘ancient’ cultures, they are there because these countries were warm countries. So the classic sheepskins of the Mongols or the heavy cloaks of…
An Obsession With Knowing
For most of our history on this planet when we haven’t known the reason for something we have made one up. It isn’t that we enjoy lying to ourselves, although myth making is rather fun, but because to have a vacuum in our knowledge frightens us. Not to know is to have no power, not…
Festivals
When my mother lived in India she had a friend who jokingly used to say he didn’t do any work because he enjoyed participating in everyone’s festivals and each one meant a day off. The festivals of so many religions and sects are bountiful in India but all over the world people celebrate. Celebrations can…
So So Secret
I was wondering about secrecy and realised that 99.99% of everything that happens in this world is a secret from me, and that’s over-estimating what I may know. I may know a great deal of the kind of things that happen by extension from my own reading and experience, but actually I don’t even know…