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It never gets any easier

I was talking with my cousin yesterday about our surviving parents, who by chance happen to live quite close to one another – her mother is in her ninety-third year and my father approaching his 90th birthday. Both high-achievers in their heyday, they are still relatively ‘on the ball’ and [...]

July 20, 2015 // 0 Comments

Life as it is lived

Earlier this week I had lunch with an old business colleague, whom for present purposes I shall call Peter, in what might formerly have been termed either my ‘manor’ (that’s certainly how Arthur Daley would have described it), viz. London’s West End, specifically the area around Soho and [...]

July 17, 2015 // 0 Comments

The Eden Project

I’m not intuitively either a green, Eco warrior or lover of plants or shrubs so the idea of spending 4 hours in the company of these did not fill me with much enthusiasm. However on a rainy day other attractions were not at my disposal so I joined the trip to the Eden project at St Austell. [...]

July 15, 2015 // 0 Comments

Never again if I can help it

For someone who knows precious little of Britain north of Watford I have had a huge adventure these past 36 hours, namely a trip to Cleethorpes and Grimsby in north-east Lincolnshire to visit relatives. The journey up took an epic seven hours, broken only by a half-hour stop at the Newport Pagnall [...]

July 15, 2015 // 0 Comments

The Idle Rocks, St Mawes

My readers will know how wary I am of restaurants with panoramic views. Equally that I factor into the restaurant experience greeting, comfort, service and cost as much as food. I’m pleased to report that the restaurant at the Idle Rocks scores on every count except possibly value. I first [...]

July 14, 2015 // 0 Comments

Self apartment v hotel

The pros and cons of self-catering apartments are fairly obvious. The benefits are it’s cheaper, more spacious, less tied to a hotel regime. The drawbacks are it’s less of a holiday with cooking, cleaning and washing and you’re less likely to meet people. I was disappointed on [...]

July 13, 2015 // 0 Comments

Menabilly

I’m heading up the latest National Rust artistic appreciation tour to the Menabilly estate. Although this has been owned by the Rashleigh family since the reign of Elizabeth 1 it is best known for the 20 odd years that Daphne du Maurier lived here. As a young child on a family holiday at [...]

July 12, 2015 // 0 Comments

Back in the grind

Yesterday the media was full of reports on the study into ageing undertaken by Duke University in North Carolina published in the journal Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences. Based upon the health and broader lives of 1,000 New Zealanders born in 1972 or 1973 in Dunedin, the researchers [...]

July 8, 2015 // 0 Comments

The gap between reality and ‘how things should be’

At the outset of this piece I wish to stress that it merely represents my opinion and gut instinct. You could argue that opening with a statement such as this is nothing but a slimy ‘get out’ device designed to avoid or deflect accusations that what I’m about to express has no basis in [...]

July 7, 2015 // 0 Comments

This medical business

My father was an esteemed doctor but, after 11 hours of daily uninterrupted practice, the last thing he wanted to treat was any illness in the family. So we all became rather stoic. We also learned a lot about the medical business. One of the uses of a good doctor is to assess whether an operation [...]

July 7, 2015 // 0 Comments

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