My baby is leaving home. Not for another ten years – he’s only eight – but today it began, the leaving. On Saturdays I wake up early (nine, but it feels early because everyone except Small is still in bed) and creep downstairs to make breakfast for Small and me: our Saturday Toast Together. During […]
I believe in God. Wait, that’s wrong – I believe in Love. Sorry. Easy mistake to make, for me, anyway, because until quite recently I didn’t believe in either. In fact, I was pretty convinced that both were equally pernicious man-made constructs, conceived and refined as a means of subduing and pacifying specific groups of […]
A little pome for the Dude, whose easy-going style inspired the Coen Brothers to make a movie. She is the only person in the world who NEVER gets on my nerves and she deserves all of the happily ever afters. Toast each other, every win,No matter how small, or fleeting.Drink champagne (or something bubbly),Giggle wickedly.Remember […]
Watching the BBC’s ‘Survivors’ last night brought tears to my eyes. Not because it’s an especially brilliant drama; but because of the eerie timing. The dispossessed, teaming up to free victims of a collapsed building; the injured, buried alive under rubble. It was painful to realise that the very same scenes I was watching on […]
Popular Does Not = Crap And actually, unpopular doesn’t, either. Value judgements, when it comes to artistic endeavour, are entirely subjective, and the success of a piece of work doesn’t necessarily correlate with the level of effort expended by, or the talent of, its creator. There’s a school of thought that suggests any work achieving […]
‘Articulate’ and ‘eloquent’ are often used interchangeably to mean ‘convincing with words,’ but there’s an important difference between the two terms. To convey an idea effectively you need to be articulate; but only eloquence can achieve emotional resonance. Eloquence requires a fluency in the language of feelings, an understanding of the simple means by which […]
We’re all mini-broadcasters now. Many of us still have a weakness for traditional sources of information such as television news, the national newspapers and even the good old-fashioned library; but if you also have any kind of online existence, you’ll have noticed how much richer the information-gathering experience is these days. For any given news […]
No doubt Barack Obama’s stated aims in the furtherance of peace are laudable enough, but in the case of Iran I wonder if the Nobel Committee hasn’t been a little premature in its evaluation of his efforts. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is a repressive regime, governing without – despite protestations of democracy – […]
Dear Headmaster Like most parents, I want my children to have access to stimulating, informative materials that will enhance their knowledge of the world around them. At home, I carefully select the books, films, plays and exhibitions that I believe will increase their understanding, and vet those that I think might be confusing or inappropriate. […]
There’s a very useful technique used by some IT support departments, called “Talk to the Teddy Bear,” whereby a computer user explains his or her problem to a soft toy provided for the purpose, before bothering an actual techie with it. Very often, the solution to the problem will be discovered in the act of […]
BarkerBarks: Josephine Barker 