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Articles by J S Bird

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About J S Bird

A retired academic, Jeremy will contribute article on subjects that attract his interest. More Posts

It’s all relative

Yesterday I was sitting in front of the television chatting to my 91-year old father. Somehow the death of Robert Vaughn aged 82 – best known to Brits from the ancient TV series The Man From Uncle and/or the movie The Magnificent Seven – came up. My parent commented, apparently without [...]

November 13, 2016 // 0 Comments

Upon receiving a short sharp shock

Yesterday evening, on the BBC television’s Six O’Clock News, I caught a report upon some new findings by medical researchers on the effects of smoking upon the human body. It was uncompromising, stark, direct and blunt and – for this viewer – a bit of ‘sit up and take notice’ moment. I [...]

November 4, 2016 // 0 Comments

The passing of time

I guess it was about the age of sixty that I finally ‘grew up’ and deliberately decided to embrace old age. It seemed a sensible move when the alternative was to become an embarrassment to myself – i.e. by my ever-decreasingly successful attempts to try to hold my paunch in; fighting a losing [...]

October 22, 2016 // 0 Comments

Stalemate in the wee hours

My past 24 hours was somewhat dominated by the second US presidential election (Donald Trump v Hillary Clinton) TV debate which took place from 2.00am this morning. After having a relatively quiet Sunday – reading the papers, watching the Andrew Marr Show and then then Sunday Politics, snoozing [...]

October 10, 2016 // 0 Comments

All aboard, me hearties!

Yesterday I made my ritual annual visit to the Southampton Boat Show. I’m not really a ‘yottie’ person myself but I know a lot of people who are and I’ve slipped into the habit of meeting up with four of them every year to have a look around and catch up over a fast food and beer lunch. I [...]

September 21, 2016 // 0 Comments

Television is a transient art form

Although I’d happily confess to watching far more television than is good for me, I have only rarely dipped into the realms of cultured middle-class mass viewing – most particularly the seriously cutting edge, hard-hitting, political, thriller-drama series box sets such as Wired, Breaking Bad, [...]

September 2, 2016 // 0 Comments

The ‘art’ of political correctness

For good or ill, we live in a politically-correct world. I say that because it seems to me there are both plusses and minuses to asserting the right of groups of human beings not to be discriminated against – not least that, when you get down to the bottom line and specific matters of principle [...]

August 16, 2016 // 0 Comments

Once more unto the beach …

Having never attended in the flesh either a major athletics championship or an Olympics – but always having instead relied upon either radio commentaries and/or television coverage of such things – I am not looking forward to Rio, whose Opening Ceremony occurs today, with any particular sense [...]

August 5, 2016 // 0 Comments

A cock-up that led to a fun day

After a poor beginning my yesterday tuned out to be both fruitful and enjoyable. As arranged, at 10.00am my pal Patrick pitched up to collect and take me to a business meeting an hour later. We duly presented ourselves at the office reception and, after a wait until at least ten minutes beyond our [...]

July 30, 2016 // 0 Comments

An afternoon on the ocean wave

Yesterday I went out on a pleasant afternoon motor launch trip with my father and some friends on the south coast. This was after I had braved England’s motorways to get there – and for the fourth consecutive time in doing so, found myself trapped in a serious traffic gridlock. This time the [...]

July 8, 2016 // 0 Comments

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