"What would you like for your birthday, Poppy?", they asked. I knew immediately what I wanted. "A puppy like Jane's", I said, excitedly. Mummy smiled sadly at me and said that she didn't think that would be possible. But she turned to Daddy and he said we'd have to see. He had said that when…Read more Nothing Arrived
folk
Sharig (and some)
What, you may ask, is 'Sharig'? And it's a perfectly good question. Not even the mighty Google can give a sensible answer to that. Unless it's a spelling mistake. ("Did you mean 'sharing', O seeker of truth?", it offers in reply. But there's no way to answer 'No'.) So don't look for deep meaning in…Read more Sharig (and some)
Craobhacha
It was St. Patrick's Day last week and a number of online commemorations passed across the Crotchety Computer Screen. Beyond rumours of partial Irish ancestry two or three generations back I have no connection with the Emerald Isle so, on the whole, they held only a passing interest. Indeed, those tributes to the people and…Read more Craobhacha
Everything Is Broken
The world is broken. It is broken in so many ways. There are inexcusable wars; there is unconscionable famine. Schoolchildren have to go on strike to tell the politicians that they are not doing enough to combat climate change. Gunmen kill our brothers and sisters just because they follow a different religion. And even the…Read more Everything Is Broken
Sometimes You Just Drive
Time is relative. We don't need Einstein to tell us that. Sometimes time drags; sometimes it flies by. For Michael Chapman, although his face and guitar picking fingers have aged, his music remains as fresh today as it did 50 and more years ago. The English folk singer-songwriter released another album a few days ago…Read more Sometimes You Just Drive
Narrow Margins
In 1637 Pierre de Fermat, a French lawyer and mathematician, scribbled a short note in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica, a 3rd century AD treatise by the Greek mathematician, Diophantus. He wrote that he had found a marvellous proof of the following statement: an + bn = cn has no solution for any…Read more Narrow Margins
Waiting
According to Wikipedia, "Advent is a season observed in many Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting". It's the same in non-religious communities, too, because it's also when little children start waiting for a jovial old man with a long white beard, dressed in a bright red suit, to come down the chimney to deliver…Read more Waiting
