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Tough times when you want to know what’s what …

These days it’s perhaps simultaneously both healthy and damned disappointing that in the 21st Century the safest approach for the average member of the public is to reach for a large pinch of salt when analysing everything they see or hear. Whether it’s anything that US President Trump manages [...]

November 19, 2019 // 0 Comments

Reflections upon Remembrance Sunday

My paternal grandfather, whom I never met, was a territorial soldier for most of his adult life. Twenty years old at the outbreak of war in August 1914, as the saying goes “he had a [relatively] good WW1” in that, despite being wounded several times and at one point buried alive, he fought in [...]

November 10, 2019 // 0 Comments

The legacy continues

On the eve of Remembrance Sunday the thoughts of many of us turn to those who have served or still serve in the military – those who survived unharmed the experience of being ‘in action’, those who survived but were physically or mentally scarred by it and, of course, those who [...]

November 9, 2019 // 0 Comments

Rediscovering the past at home

I’m currently staying for the weekend at my father’s place on the south coast of England where over the past six months there have been a few changes, not least the departure of a long-serving part-time housekeeper and her replacement by another who is several notches more dynamic and diligent. [...]

October 26, 2019 // 0 Comments

Spitfire

I am a person of ritual and routine. I like to do the Telegraph crossword at 6 pm with a glass of malt whisky. At 8.00 pm before retiring I like to watch the TV for an hour, the problem is that none of the staple diet of bake-offs, ballroom dancing or celebrities doing whatever appeal. So I build [...]

October 18, 2019 // 0 Comments

Then and now … and then some

For those of generations after mine – and indeed my own to the extent that memories may be fading – one of Britain’s light-entertainment stars of yester-year was proud Yorkshireman Wilfred Pickles (1904-1978). Pickles’ signature radio programme Have A Go graced the BBC airwaves from 1947 to [...]

October 13, 2019 // 0 Comments

John Mann MP/ what a man

I suspect the name of John Mann is not that familiar with many of our readers and, if it is, it would be as the man who called to his face Ken Livingstone “a fucking Nazi”. He is the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, taking over from Joe Ashton and elevated to the House of Lords by Theresa May as [...]

October 11, 2019 // 0 Comments

A feature of the modern world

With a nod to “When did you last stop beating your wife?” – the legal phrase allegedly deployed recently and controversially by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC – I wished to turn today to the vexed subject of gender. In doing so, and being (as I am) sufficiently ‘in touch’ to be [...]

October 6, 2019 // 0 Comments

Something to write home about

As it happens I was out on the golf course yesterday partaking in a traditional practice round in the company of a Canadian relative by marriage in advance of an annual family tournament – an outing in days of yore used to be a welcome warm-up for the main event. Sadly, I fear that at my stage of [...]

October 4, 2019 // 0 Comments

And in The End …

It is in the nature of things that at a Ruster’s stage of life reminders of tempus fugit – welcome or otherwise – tend to come thick and fast in all areas of existence. Recently in the field of music a new edition of the Beatles’ penultimately released (but last recorded) album Abbey Road, [...]

October 3, 2019 // 0 Comments

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