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Health

Review of the sporting weekend

As some sports – e.g. football and rugby union – move towards the business end of their domestic seasons, others are in the early stages of their new ones, witness the European indoor athletics championships in Glasgow that featured widely upon the BBC main television channels over the [...]

March 4, 2019 // 0 Comments

Watching the world and frightening yourself

One by-product of being someone who daily trawls the UK newspaper websites over the years is that one notices the frequency with which reports of latest scientific and medical research findings, particularly relating to health and ageing, appear to contradict each other. Thus one day we learn that [...]

March 1, 2019 // 0 Comments

Thoughts upon the word of news – and vaginas

One aspect of the universality of social media and the internet is that it has not just broken the mould of what used to be the traditional (and for ages presumed unchangeable) means of news dissemination but actually blow the whole world of news information and human interaction wide-open. For [...]

February 20, 2019 // 0 Comments

Wagner and somnabulance

Yesterday in our opera class my neighbour fell asleep as we listened to Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. I immediately thought of the judge censured for falling asleep at court. Of course there is a world of difference between sleeping on duty and sleeping in a class. In both cases though it [...]

February 14, 2019 // 0 Comments

Some days are better than others

These past few days I have been spending time with my ageing father and his resident carer at his home on the south coast. He has reached a stage in life where his appreciation of what is going on is necessarily restricted by his physical and mental frailties notwithstanding the fact that those [...]

January 19, 2019 // 0 Comments

Murray should still make a mint

I have a confession to make. Ever since earlier this week – on the eve of the Australian Open – Andy Murray made his not altogether unexpected but nevertheless shock announcement that the chronic hip condition he has been suffering from these past two years had almost certainly brought him [...]

January 13, 2019 // 0 Comments

It’s that time of year again

Probably as a form of defence mechanism, or alternatively an easy stock manner of beginning a conversation, in response to any incoming “How are you?” query on the phone or in person my aged father would habitually reply “I’m alive”. Elsewhere – e.g. upon meeting or being introduced [...]

January 12, 2019 // 0 Comments

“Goodbye cruel world …” he said, but couldn’t remember why …

Hello – this may be one of my last messages to my fellow Rusters if the latest reports in the media prove to be true – or should that be ‘come to fruition’? Today I appear before you honestly yet nakedly as a 70 year old male with a slight tendency to obesity – I’m not prepared to [...]

January 10, 2019 // 0 Comments

Feminism and the art of being a woman

These days, being something of an old crone in the scheme of modern feminism since I was supposedly in my prime – burning my bra and breaking down the barriers between the sexes – during the late Sixties and early Seventies, I’m acutely conscious of the wide spectrum of opinion and [...]

January 8, 2019 // 0 Comments

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