The NHS has fallen apart and it is a sad indictment. It’s not the staff but the sheer bulk of the monster, too big and too cumbersome. I can see how my own health situation flags up all the [...]

It had not been a good week. I had had my second shingles vaccination and carried a swollen arm and pains all over my body. However, I awoke on Saturday morning in a state of ecstasy, full of the [...]

Revising my will, and Ann’s, is necessary. As time passes, named people die and we change homes. As we have no immediate family, there is no single person able to drop everything and sort [...]

As winter ends, so the desire to run further builds. I always think of Wordsworth in March. His poem, The First Mild Day of March is one I memorised many years ago. I use it to lull me to sleep [...]

It’s now light when I leap out of bed every morning. The first thing I do, before preparing breakfast, is too look out at the garden. I talk to it, ever keen to see more growth and flowers. [...]

The doctor wants to speak to me next Wednesday. It is a little depressing that I can list so many reasons why he would want to speak to me. For certain, he will not say ‘congratulations, [...]

I miss the peasants. Don’t define the word as demeaning a person. A peasant is somebody who was tied to the land, often too little land. They had no chance of ever improving their [...]

Skin lesions are the bane of my life. Firstly, I need to moisturise them each night before bed. Secondly, a new lesion seems to pop up every morning. Okay, so I exaggerate a little! These lesions [...]

I have finished my excursion with the Romans. Am I Romanised or still a Briton? Hard to say, it’s a choice between tribal violence and slavery or silver coins and bathrooms and slavery. In [...]

I suddenly realised why I am so entranced by the Peak District. It’s that constant contrast between safety and danger, between bleak and attractive, between rock and flower. Unlike Scotland [...]

When I think of the royal we(e), urinary retention comes to mind. That little gland is a damn nuisance, not just to Charles but to me. I have had trouble for years and only recently spoke to a [...]

I am struggling with lidar. In case you have never seen this word, it is a laser light exploration of the ground beneath our feet. The process can show up ground features we simply cannot see on [...]

I love worms! A hate killing (earth)worms when I am gardening. I even stop on runs or walks to pick one off the path and put it on the verge. If this seems an odd subject then bear in mind that [...]

It was Christmas Day and my mind was full of dead people. I woke up thinking of the lost. Those people I might have telephoned or sent a letter wishing them well at the end of another year. [...]

I love language and words. Reading an item about author Daisy Goodwin, she said her daughter told her, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” That related to her rather ample bosom, [...]

Exercise is medicine and is also therapy. Exercise is also rare, rarer than hen’s teeth, especially if you are over 10 years of age! The exercise is medicine reference arose when I joined a [...]

I am not writing this thinking it might be the last item I ever write, but who really knows. I am coming to terms with age. This problem, of not looking forward, as I did up to age 60 or more, is [...]

I’m supercharged! We fitted three more batteries and pushed our capacity to over 14 kilowatt hours. That is more than we use each day, especially when our solar panels are producing. They [...]

Running to Castleton is a joy, call it tough love if you prefer. The rain has lashed down and it’s been really cold these past few weeks. Ann and I had to review our usual run, which was [...]

Ah, the bulbs are all in. It took me the best part of a month to plant about 700. Yes, the figure is correct. I have a bad dose of tulip fever and there is no cure. Well, that is not entirely [...]

Back in a past life, I attended a gym in Croydon. As a weedy individual, it was a little scary. Hulking male bodies abounded, all wearing ripped t-shirts. What was that all about? The muscles on [...]

We planned a four day visit to Llanberis, a stomping ground of mine in the sixties. The second day looked the best so we planned a run, but what to do? We fancied Snowdon but the climb of over [...]

I love hillforts! On my recent trip to North Wales, this fort was on my agenda. It is no easy trip. You drive to Llithfaen on the Llyn Penisula, turn west in the village and climb to a free car [...]

My neighbour walked by with his little daughter. She wanted to be lifted to look over the wall at my flowers. He told me she is suddenly infatuated with flowers. I picked a flower stem off a [...]