It finally happened. My venerable distinguished long-serving much-suffering loyal Samsung Galaxy S2, which has been my travelling companion across continents for a number of years, finally ended its service. It got itself stuck in a boot-loop. I may or may not be able to recover the data that I want – we will see this [Read More…]
I had some very unwanted visitors today. A swarm of 10,000 bees or more decided they liked the look of one of the chimneys on my house, and descended down inside to take over. As much as I like bees and appreciate the honey they produce as good solid workers, I don’t care to share [Read More…]
There are definitely times in an author’s daily routine when a little something special is needed. Now this doesn’t happen that often with me, but somehow today seemed like one of those days. So I have to confess that I made my way down to the kitchen to the glasses cabinet and picked out a [Read More…]
Next year will mark the 100th Anniversary of the death of one of America’s great heroes – William F Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. Here’s my early tribute. One of the things that has fascinated me about the USA is the concept of early explorers and settlers travelling out west in search of fame [Read More…]
This is an early evening winter rush-hour view of Berlin and the great Kurfürstendamm street, running off towards the top left of the picture, away from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church – the original Church is just beyond the modern Church and Tower, in the lower right of the image. It’s a very famous landmark [Read More…]
It’s been one of my great pleasures to fly in the skies of South Africa. The country’s big – 472,000 square miles (1.2m Sq Km), making it 5 times larger than the UK. I planned to hire an aircraft in Johannesburg, a Cessna 182. Nearly all of my flying has been done on low wing [Read More…]
It was a delight for me to be able to attend the Barbican Theatre in London on Saturday evening (28 Nov) to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s latest stage production of HENRY V. Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, it’s one of my favourites. Although there are films – the Classic of the Classic, Olivier’s; Kenneth [Read More…]
I have just enjoyed watching, for the umpteenth time, Ron Howard’s film Apollo 13, which tells the story of the ill-fated Apollo mission that had an accident on its way to the Moon in 1970. What a great storyteller Ron Howard is. He takes his themes and presents them with style, delicacy, depth, thoughtfulness and [Read More…]
This weekend, people in Paris, in France and around the world have cried, mourned, felt anger and shock, yet are resolute and determined. The loss of life is tragic, and there have to be questions asked of the French security forces; how could this attack have happened? However, this loss of life is not, I’m [Read More…]
600 years ago this year – in 1415 – Henry V, against all odds, won the Battle of Agincourt. Just under 200 years later, Shakespeare wrote a play about it. I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1975 production of Henry V. Henry was played by Alan Howard. It was a stirring performance, with Howard very [Read More…]