Hi Everyone In March 2020, just over a week before the first Covid lockdown, I was in our local Pharmacy together with nearly fifteen staff and customers crowded into a relatively small space. I remember being very uneasy about the situation and being relieved when I was able to leave the shop after about five minutes. At the same time, I was using a local gym three times a week, but after that incident in the pharmacy, we decided to have our own voluntary lockdown, as we kne

Hi Everyone When I was young, the radio news, the daily newspaper and the cinema newsreel were our only sources of news. On the radio, that news was provided by the BBC. Which newspaper you read was usually dependent on your political views. Now there are a myriad of TV and internet news channels, while those people who still buy newspapers are still influenced by their political views. Now, not a lot of people know this, but the BBC is 103 years old. During those years, has

Hi Everyone Now you must all know by now that the Senior Partner was tight with money. If she had been around today, she would not have to make sure that the shop scales were tipped in her favour or make less than 2 pence on each pound of potatoes that she sold. She would not have had to inspect the waste bin in the shop before the Junior Partner was allowed to consign the waste to the pig bin in the yard or get down on her knees with a bucket of soapy water to scrub the shop

Hi Everyone I think that most of us watching and listening to world events over the past few months are irritated by the so called leaders who have massive egos or have misused the powers that they have been given. It was refreshing to encounter two people this week that I did not previously know much about. Firstly, Kamila Harris, who lost to Trump in the presidential elections last year, gave a fairly long interview on BBC TV. She was here to promote her book 107 Days, the

Hi Everyone There have been a couple of interesting stories in the last couple of weeks with a common theme. The first was that over 30,000 homes across the country have had insulation work done to their homes under a government backed scheme that has cost millions of taxpayers' money. Apparently, about 90% of the work done was deemed to be substandard and has left the homes in a worst state than before. The second story was that locally work to repair potholes had again been

Hi Everyone This week, Trump flew back home from Israel and later Egypt, declaring that he had achieved peace in the Middle East. If he really believes the words he is uttering, then he is deluded. Now, those are not my words but the opinion of a BBC journalist who has reported on Middle Eastern conflicts and politics for almost thirty years. From my viewpoint, the more I read about the situation, the more confused I become with my sympathies moving from one side to the other

Hi Everyone Most of my readers will know that as you approach middle age, many things pass you by and, more importantly, many...

Hi Everyone This week, our news has been dominated by a BBC reporter who had been working in a London police station with a special...

Hi Everyone This week, a pop group returned from yet another world tour. During an interview on TV they were asked where their favourite...

Hi Everyone It seems that the topic of free speech has been again in the news this week. We all appreciate that we are able to express...

Hi Everyone One of my earliest memories, I would be about four at the time, was sitting next to the Junior Partner in his car, driving...

Hi Everyone As you probably already know, as someone who is approaching middle age, pop music of the last thirty years has passed me by....

Hi Everyone Fortunately, as we approach middle age, we have some great holiday memories both with our children and then on our own in...

Hi Everyone A few years ago, I researched my family tree. I got back to 1710 when Matthew Mate married Ann Biker at a church about 20...

Hi Everyone Now, as you know, I am just approaching middle age, so I was certainly not around almost two thousand years ago, wearing a...

Hi Everyone It was interesting to read a couple of weeks ago that one of the effects of climate change was that people were beginning to...

Hi Everyone When my children and grandchildren said that they were hungry, my usual answer was that they had never been hungry in their...

Hi Everyone Did you realise that many of the world leaders are approaching middle age and nearly all are hoping to leave a legacy for the...

Hi Everyone Although we have never been weekly cinema goers, we have always enjoyed a visit to our local cinema when there was an...

Hi Everyone What a relief to realise that the central heating has been off for some weeks now, and as we pay the same amount for our...