Reflections

2036 is 23 years from now – thank heavens!

No sooner have we celebrated the fact that we’ve all survived the end of the world as predicted by the Maya calendar (which, BTW, seems to have been a TOTAL misunderstanding as the Mayans mainly concluded one cycle of time would end on the 21 of December 2012 and be replaced by a new one) […]

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White lies, big fibs and horrible truthsayers

Truth hurts, they say. And yet most of us will at some point or another stare our children in the eyes and tell them to always tell the truth. In actual fact, we don’t want to hear the truth – at least not always. When a small child backs away from its elderly relative, clasps

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May thy slumber be blessed

There’s a poem I particularly love that’s called Canción de Cuna (Lullaby) by Juan Ramón Jimenez, a Spanish poet. No; dormida no te beso. Tú me has dado tu alma con tus ojos abiertos -o jardín estrellado- a tu cuerpo. No, dormida no eres tú…No, no, no te beso! …Infiel te fuera a ti si

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No rest for the weary

Is it only me, or are more and more of us living lives that balance on a cutting edge? So much to do, so many social media to keep up with, and so very little time … Of course, we have as much time now as people did fifty years ago, or a century ago.

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The end of the world

Since man took his first shaky intellectual steps, we’ve been thinking about The Final Day. All religious beliefs contain some sort of Day of Reckoning, and implicit in this is the belief that Someday It Will All End. The Maya Indians believed that this would come to happen on December 21 of 2012. Okay, so

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Making my day

There are various rewards to writing, starting with the exotic experience of being sucked into a fantasy world of one’s own creation. I suspect all authors experience moments of such utter absorption everyday life becomes a fuzzy noise in the background, an inconsequential little irritant in an existence that is entirely focused on the story

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Pavlov’s dogs and all that

Whenever I approach my house, I am overtaken by an urge to pee. I insert my key into the lock and have to twist my legs together – entirely ridiculous as quite often there should be no such need. Into the hallway, kick off shoes, dump my rucksack and after setting yet another new record

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The generation that never was

There’s a poem by Swedish Nobel Laureate Pär Lagerkvist that deals with death and afterlife, in which he rather sadly states that “soon it will all be taken from me; the trees, the clouds, the ground upon which I tread. I will wander on alone, leaving not the slightest trace.” But people do leave imprints

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Shop until you drop

It is five thirty on the Friday after pay day, and I’m stupid enough to be at IKEA with a shopping list long as my arm and droves of people equally equipped. Of course, the reason all of us are there at this same time is because our lists exceed our end-of-month wallets, and so,

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