Disconnected Jottings

This my journal from my trip to London with my Grandpa Day One

The flight down from Edinburgh was smooth, but I had earache during the descent into Heathrow. When we were waiting for our luggage I saw Miss Stein, she was my teacher when I was in P5!

The express train into London Paddington is very fast, it only takes 15 minutes to get right into central London, then we took a taxi to a pub called ‘The Queens Head and Artichoke’, just across the road from our friend Dan’s flat.

Dan was waiting on the pavement, so we went into the pub for lunch, then across the road to Dan’s flat, which is in a basement but is bigger than I thought it would be. Read the rest of this entry »

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It was one of those group psychology moments that you read about, where each team member is waiting for someone else to suggest a better plan, like sleeping in the car, or going back to the pub, or just going home. Read the rest of this entry »

Accidents excepted, it’s beginning to look as if your life is in your own hands in more than the metaphorical sense. A recent BBC post outlined research that seems to prove that the ‘an apple a day’ adage may be true, and that healthy living can add around 14 years of quality life. Read the rest of this entry »

The images are from personal visits to this fascinating mediaeval walled town in the verdant and beautiful countryside of Tuscany (click here for a good website about the history and attractions of the area). Read the rest of this entry »

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Blame global warming if you like, but the hard crisp winters of happy memory are just that – memories. The pattern in more recent times has been for a dump of snow and sub-zero temperatures around the end of November (we all think ‘this is it’!), then a return to higher temperature levels and constant rainfall. Read the rest of this entry »

Something to get straight from the very start – there never was a tribe of Indians called the ‘Anasazi’. Read the rest of this entry »

We made three separate trips on this famous narrow gauge railway, from Durango to the old mining town of Silverton, 9,300 feet up in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Read the rest of this entry »

cartoon by bigeyedeer

Not usually very observant, I had noticed that the Big Issue sellers on the usual pitches seemed to have changed nationality – and that some of them were a bit more aggressive than usual, but a chance look at Steve Clarkson’s blog focused my attention on a disturbing trend. Read the rest of this entry »

write your own caption!

It’s a tricky little thing, the prostate. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Fulghum in 2007

I saw a new article about Robert Fulghum – an author whose words have resonated with me over the years; words that are worth another look as we head for 2008. Read the rest of this entry »