This World, This Life

Well, this is turning into a rum old year. If I had made any, my New Year's Resolutions would have largely been shot to hell by now, as they would have included exercising more, losing more weight (and boy, do I need to!), publishing my book and progressing the other two projects in hand (that's the memoir and the travel book), and re-jigging the ten year old and fading Around The World In 80 Expense Claims  blog (this last on the basis that retirees aren't known for submitting the things). I managed to do that, at least, and you're reading the results.  I'm pleased with the way This World, This Life looks, but it's struggling to be honest.  I don't think the writing is particularly bad and the increase in pictorial content make it look fresher, and in any case I'm not after a Pullitzer (or whatever the blogging equivalent is).  It's basically a hobby for me that I hope(d) would entertain other people too. The problem is, while the old one ...

It's a Tuesday in June.  So far, summer has been nothing to write about: the typical Warsaw late spring, early summer heat and clear blue skies have been few and far between.  Instead of the odd cloudburst at the end of a muggy day, we have suffered fairly persistent rainy days throughout May and into this month.  For once, England has seen better weather than here. But today, it's been better.  Yesterday was better still, with a temperature close to 30C, but today's 27C has been fine, mostly blue skies but with cloud bubbling up now and then.  Right now, it's close to 11 in the evening, and the temperature is cooling steadily (but still a comfortable 21C).  The clouds have mostly cleared away, and there is not a breath of wind.  It's a quiet, still evening. I'm sitting in my rocker on my 5th floor balcony, surrounded by potted plants and scented candles, blazing away.   The shared courtyard garden is deserted but in full bloom, a...

I've just spent a pleasant couple of weeks re-acquainting myself with the writings of John Wyndham.  A once celebrated practitioner of science fiction, back in my 1950s childhood, his books (apart from the classic The Day of the Triffids ) are now rarely seen outside of second-hand bookshops, and even there infrequently.  For me, he rates alongside his American contemporaries like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, and his fellow Englishman Arthur C. Clarke in defining a once niche form of writing and bringing it to acceptablilty as a respected genre. ----------------------------------------------------------- Brian Aldiss, another English contemporary, once damned Wyndham's books with faint praise: "He wrties about cosy catastrophe", he wrote somewhat disparagingly about Triffids .  Many other critics and sci-fi authors have contested this and cited Wyndham as an influence in their own writing.  Without trying to criticise Aldiss, a rever...

LOCKDOWN NOUN: A security measure in which those inside a building or area are required to remain confined in it for a time. - English definition, Courtesy: Collins English Dictionary, Online Edition Like most of us, probably, I had only come across the word in shoddy American tv shows and movies, typically accompanied by much gunfire and explosions, usually with Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger in the thick of it.  Then along came COVID-19.  Suddenly, most of the world found itself in lockdown – and without a shot being fired.  The world started to change before our eyes, in ways most of us had never believed possible. ------------------------------------------- People and governments reacted in different ways.  In Europe, Italy and Spain were a bit caught out and hence have suffered the worst attrition.  Britain, as usual, reacted late and arguably this cost unnecessary lives, as much as anything because the government seems to ...

There's been a lot written in the press and various chatrooms relating to footballers - particulary the highly paid "superstars" of the Premiership - and their response (or lack of) to the Coronavirus epidemic.  It's part of a wider narrative about how the sport has acted so far, when play has been forced to a standstill so close to season's end. Let's take the second bit first.  It seems to me with the virus still raging across the world, talking of being able to re-start the season in May and finishing it by mid-summer, using the windows offered by UEFA's pragmatic decision to suspend the Champions League and Europa League competitions indefinitely and move the scheduled international Euro 2020 finals into 2021 to do so, is a little over-optimistic.  There is still so much medical scientists and the WHO still do not know about the virus - for instance whether there could be a second outbreak in Asia (which is at present pretty stable) or elsewhere ...

Norman Davies – “Beneath Another Sky: A Global Journey Into History.” Professor Davies is a Bolton-born historian of Welsh ancestry – and proud of it. A specialist in Eastern European history, in particular that of Poland (where he spends much time, having taken citizenship in 2014, and has a home in Krakow), he is without a doubt my favourite historian. His books are always entertaining, packed with detail that really gets under the skin of his subject matter. Davies doesn’t merely record a dull succession of historical facts, characters, events and dates, although they are all there. They are supported by a wealth of anecdotes, fragments of poetry and song from the period and country in question, documents, detailed maps and illustrations that bring his subject to life. His writing is clear and, considering that his topic can be complex and a bit dry, hugely entertaining. I’ve read several of his books, and never failed to enjoy them immensely and learn from t...

A while back (November last, to be precise) I posted a piece on my old Blog ( The World According to Travellin' Bob - http://travellin-bob.blogspot.com) in which I compared experiences on the main browsers out there.  I came down in favour of Chrome, closely followed by Edge with Firefox a close third.  In the time since then, I've continued to shuttle back and forth between them, but for me there has been very little in it.  But in the last week my views have crystallised.  Here is why. Truth be told, as I wrote previously, all three of them are decent browsers for the average Joe Public, non-techie user.  They are all easy enough to set up, they all can run quite happily with multipe tabs open, they all offer security and privacy tools, password management and ad-blockers.  Pages load fast enough, they're all stable......basically if you just want to use them to browse the internet, manage e-mails, watch the odd YouTube video and listen to internet ...