I survived for the first sixty years of my life without giving much thought to how many steps I was doing each day.  I can remember a colleague way back in the seventies saying that we should be provided with pedometers at work to record how many steps we took in any given day, and…

Anniversaries can be joyful but they can also be very sad. The 26th of April is going to be a sad one for our family as our beloved shih tzu, Misty, crossed the Rainbow Bridge two years ago. She was over 15 years old and in her last year she suffered many health problems but…

Just after Easter, we walked the ‘Henley loop’ with my sister and brother in law. It was a bright breezy day but the ground was damp and muddy. I was bringing up the rear. Each time we came to a muddy patch, I would stop and assess how best to cross it. Could I skirt…

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…