The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan does it a lot. David Beckham too and Joseph Gordon Levitt. A whole raft of show-biz types in fact and including on occasion and to my horror, my eldest son. Â I refer to pulling a certain face for the cameras. Ben Stiller called it Blue Steele in his…
We live in hierarchies and we all know where we stand, right?  Tallest? Best looking? Wealthiest? Funniest? Most successful…  What we do for a living; from the vaunted professions down… we are all workers with our names either on our shirts, our desks, the office door or finally on the building itself.  …
This is not an easy post to write. I feel a need to write with some haste but with great care also because the tone needs to be correct: arresting yet affirming but not mawkish. An important post; I make no apology that it is longer than my usual fare. You will understand why soon…
At university, I was a keen supporter of charity shops but not for philanthropic reasons. Just that I was skint and I needed clobber and no matter how musty or ill-fitting. I don’t even recall ever considering the origins of such wares. That I was often wearing clothes of men who had died. Donated by…
Who is your favourite actor?  This is a question we have all been asked and probably struggled to answer.  It is an impossible question perhaps and particularly so for me, since it requires me to choose between two of my sons who are currently treading the boards.  It is also a question…
An upside of my chosen profession is that I have not needed to lie for many years. And if not lie, then at least misrepresent. This is because I have not needed to prepare my Curriculum Vitae or Resume; perhaps the hardest document any of us are ever required to write. Our achievements laid bare…
A post this week inspired by an email I received from someone I have never met…  I am a nostalgic type and becoming ever more so, which I suspect is quite normal and just a factor of age. I have great affection for my childhood, particularly my school days and despite only faring averagely…
I begin with an exchange I had this morning walking my dog, to demonstrate the  importance of language and to frame the subject of this blog. Tess (my dog) and I are in the park. It is baking hot and neither of us are very comfortable. A lady approaches me in a very flustered state…
I find that there are little moments in life that catch us out; some good and some bad. Driving home from afar and being able to pick up a local radio station again is a good moment. A hazy signal at first and not clear enough to listen to comfortably, Â but becoming stronger with every…
That feeling when someone is at your front door – selling something.  It happened last week to Nikki – and thinking quickly, she took immediate and decisive action.  “I’ll get my husband.”  You can imagine how I received this news? Disbelief is a polite way of putting it, but inaccurate.  Door…
