The world of the emoji is peripheral to the one I inhabit. It is easy to imply extreme reactions to otherwise mundane, everyday events. We become overreactors and if that happens, how do we respond when something truly unusual occurs? I know I can be on the blunt side; I prefer not to use opaque…

Now that many of our Easter Celebrations are over, I am back to my Eddie Askew book. This morning I have been reading “The Bird Seed Takeaway”.  It really does relate to my garden.  He talks about filling the bird feeder with a mix of seeds and peanuts and watching through the Kitchen window, which…

A quick check of the internet throws up the interesting (startling) fact that of the approximately 200 countries in the world, over 25% or one quarter of them are ruled by autocrats or dictators. Some are so well known and obvious that we could rattle of their names without much hesitation. There are some who…

Until recently, I had never heard of the village of Llanymynech, which, as you might guess from the name, is located in Wales, well, almost.  What makes Llanymynech an interesting place, is that thee border between England and Wales runs along the A483, North Road, the main street in the village, meaning that residents on…

I used to do a lot of cross stitch pictures but now that my eyesight is not so good, I only do small ones and only in good daylight. It’s amazing how a picture is created with carefully chosen colours and stitches. Also, how the front is very neat but the back can look quite…

Gareth Southgate was interviewed about his latest inclusion in the England squad, James Maddison, who was making his debut against Ukraine. Talking about his flexibility and many skills on the pitch, he said he had granted him a ‘license to drift’, meaning, I suppose, that he was free to move wherever he wanted, wherever he…

The question of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been in the press recently. Questions have been raised over whether we know what we are doing, or if there is a real risk, like something from a science fiction novel, of the invention taking over the inventor. I have recently been in a situation…

There are times when to relax and to turn off from the busyness of life I take to watching ‘rubbish’ television, the type of thing which does not tax my mind too much.  I have been watching a series called ‘Go Hard or go Home’ and while the image on the promotion for the series…

When I open the blind in the kitchen in the morning the first thing I see is a large patch of yellow.  Our daffodils are in full bloom in the bed in the middle of the garden.  What a wonderful sight. When they die down I leave them as long as I can before cutting…

Last week I accidentally cut the top of my thumb. This necessitated a trip to A&E and resulted with a very impressive bandage on the injured digit. I had plenty of time to reflect whilst waiting to be seen by a nurse in the Urgent Treatment Centre. (Actually the wait wasn’t excessively long). It was…