In life, I realise I have no influence or authority in any sphere at all.
After a sweltering day yesterday, disturbed by the heat, we had a night of uninterrupted thunderstorms, the flash of lighting illuminating the whole house every few moments. Today has been wet from dawn to dusk, though the gales and driving rain of the morning now seem to have subsided a little. We hope for blue …
The killer feature I was holding out for in the new Samsung Z Flip 5 was not a larger cover display, but support for the excellent DeX desktop mode. The latter might have convinced me to follow my wife in embracing that folding form factor. As it is, I suspect I will hold onto my …
House is all abuzz. So many guests. It’s a good job I spent most of last summer repairing and renovating old furniture. This year, plenty of places to rest our heads. Hard work pays off.
Home or away, thank goodness for CCTV. We’re all Big Brother now, home always in reach. How the world has shrunk.
There are a few minor imperfections and mistakes of this build which I find mildly annoying, but I can’t really fault a house built remotely during national lockdowns in the midst of a global pandemic. Better to be grateful.
In life we must be prepared to encounter a lot of hypocrisy. Often those who speak most of honour are the least honourable people we may meet. Sometimes those who petition us to righteous action are riotous in their own behaviour, issuing threats for all manner of perceived misdemeanour. For some such souls, perhaps we …
When we say subhanallah, we really mean it. To say “Glory to God” or “God is perfect!” For here I am — once that extremely shy boy from the suburbs of Hull — residing in these lands, nearly three thousand miles away. How so that one who spent his youth daydreaming of building a house …
In the ever-present scorecard of England vs Turkey, the kids believe they have the upper hand. They list everything they believe is better in Turkey. I jokingly call them racist. They jokingly reciprocate. But at last we’ve found something better in England we can all agree upon. That is the TV programme, MasterChef. Every evening …
It’s always good to encounter those who verify and cross-check everything, and refuse to take anything on face value. That is the pursuit of truth made real. May those who seek find the truth they yearn, and may the truthful benefit from their truthfulness.
I can’t exactly remember why I insisted on having an open gallery above the living room, other than hoping to dissipate the summer heat, but here’s an observation for other budding architects: noise rises too. I have a feeling we will eventually backtrack on this design decision, separating upstairs and downstairs into their own private …
I suppose the children — despite behaving like they’re our masters — are too young still to understand what “personal space” means. When dropping hints did not work, we just had to show them the door, sending them off up the hill to spend the day with the neighbour’s children. But, alas, we only managed …
For nearly two decades, up until my late twenties, I was perpetually annoyed that I could neither put on weight nor develop muscles. I was so thin and scrawny that I’d refuse to go outside without long sleeves even on the hottest day of the year. So it’s a bit alarming today to discover that …
