Category: LifePage 1 of 2
Love says ‘I am everything.’
Wisdom says ‘I am nothing.’
Between the two, my life flows
One of the (shush!) side benefits of the whole Covid thing was that my 2020 sales goals went for crap. In January, we’d set targets that were higher…
The birds here are singing just as loudly although it’s raining. Yet we as humans tend to think of the rain as “bad”. Interesting.
Driving down the highway, going somewhere different, I noticed the trees, like a wall. Sometimes, I would steal a look to the right and see what was through…
The other week, my nephew found a flower, shyly living in the jungly green. “Look at its colours,” he said. “The purple that fades to pink. It’s so…
Childhood holidays were a five-hour hot slog up the motorway – with a stop for tuna sandwiches on the way – to camp in a field in Yorkshire…
When I was a child, I would lie in the bathtub so my feet could turn on the taps. Then I would block one of the spouts with…
I thought I was going to die as I drove into the moose; that moment as control is compressed into brakes and steering-wheel knuckles when there’s nothing to…
In February, which seems three decades ago not three months, I was in Lisbon. The Portuguese capital, famous for salted cod and custard tarts, is also known for…
I was a teenager in the 1980s. The era of big hair. I was no exception. I let my locks storm upwards and outwards, a hormone-powered thicket of…
The night train from Madrid to Murcia had the type of carriages where passengers sit in compartments: a row of 3 facing a row of 3, for eight…
The autumn term (as they called the first semester of the school year back in England) started bronzed and enthusiastic in September, and ended tinseled and over-excited at…
One day I thought I saw a falling satellite but it was probably just a seagull. When I was very little, legend has it I looked up at…
About 45 minutes from where I grew up, in sniffing distance of the River Alde, is the Snape Maltings concert hall. Inside the varnished room are taught strings…
When I was about three, I was terrified of collapsing sandcastles. It was the kind of terror that infiltrates every cell. It was visceral and it was total….
A friend once told me that the way to walk busy city streets was to fix your gaze ahead, focused on exactly where you wanted to go. With…
At the age of 11, I started high school, two bus rides away into another world. I was a fish scooped from his cozy bowl, poured into the…
When I was eight years old, I went on a school trip to the British county of Derbyshire. Our youth hostel was in spitting distance of the village…
At the age of 16, I was sent to see a career counselor. She made me fill in a form and then the computer spat out a list…
My last silent meditation retreat lasted seven days. There were clouds of mosquitoes and deer flies that bite your head. The food was good. Life gets small on…
When I was 18 or thereabouts, I sat my A-Levels – the UK exams to pass for university. I wrote them in May and the results were in…
Yesterday I sold a newspaper ad to a woman who makes soap. Today I unsold her. I have this new job – publisher of a local community newspaper….
When my parents laughed at my temper tantrums, it made my crying even louder. After all, here I was all upset, hoping there would be empathy for my…
One of the most dangerous things about driving in a Canadian winter isn’t the black ice (although that is dangerous) or the freezing rain (although that is dangerous…
I’d been married only two years – and then I was in a room with the dead uncle. Well, the uncle-in-law. It was the first time I’d seen…
The best night of the year was when Father Christmas came to my street. Never has a truck looked so magical, transformed by lights and music into CHRISTMAS…
Mr Redgrave was the headmaster of my first school. His face was crumpled, he smoked cigars, and his office had a scratchy carpet the colour of a kingfisher….
I never knew if I was being hazed or if this was how it was. At the end of the 90s, I did editing shifts on a big…
When the newspaper came out last week, I realized we’d left my name off an article. All those wonderful words written by Anon. This year, through a series…
One day when I was about seven years old, our next-door neighbour put a boat on his front lawn. There it sat, marooned with – most critically –…
Grandpa died an hour before my grade five piano exam. I did the exam anyway, and left the room all happy because I survived the sight-reading part. My…
I fear I was my violin teacher’s worst nightmare: a scratchy, screechy, stinky teenager who never picked up his instrument between Tuesdays. “Did you practice this week?” she…
My grandfather was the youngest of 13, born in Deptford, south-east London, to parents who struggled to make ends meet. By the end of his life, he and…
One Christmas, when I was six years old, I had a massive – existential – argument with my parents. I was sobbing on a stool in the kitchen…
I first heard of Margaret Thatcher when I was in the Downing Primary School playground and someone referred to her as an “old bag.” I didn’t know who…
When I was six, I wanted to be an elevator operator. There was excitement in buttons, sending cabled box to basement and roof. (I graduated to escalators, hitting…
“Look at that bird, he’s so sweet.” I remember my dad saying that, pointing at a close-up he’d taken of a bird in our back garden. The photo…
Last Tuesday, Dave (not his real name, let’s protect the guilty here) assured me he was happy in his job. Two days later, he quit. And that caused…
About 30 minutes from my childhood home was the Minsmere bird reserve – a marshy oasis of salty brackish water on the eroding Suffolk coast. I went there…
I remember joking to my brother once that the only reason the two of us got out of Ipswich was because we used an orbit of neighbouring Bury…
