As times passes, it occurs to me that career progression must mostly be about having the confidence to put yourself forward for new opportunities, and self-belief to pursue roles outside your current experience or expertise. It certainly doesn’t seem to be about skills, competence or what you know. I suppose the idea is that the …
It’s so strange that today I have an affinity for people who at the time were like bitter foes. Strange too that I have antipathy for some I once considered the closest of friends.
If you can, choose your companions wisely. These the thoughts that reverberate within, reflecting on the morning news. I shudder now, looking back on my own youth. Even then there were aspects of those relationships which troubled me, but I was so desperate to make friends that I’d overlook them. Friends who had been in …
I’m perpetually amazed that I became tied to this land.
I don’t know why people make things so complicated, or why they reject simple solutions in order to pursue such unnecessary complexity. Indeed, they’ve now been made so complex that they want me to sort it out for them. I really should respond: “You broke it, you fix it.” But, of course, I won’t. I’ll …
Some things you don’t see for decades. In 2002, my wife and I gifted our television set to a complete stranger, through a charity we both worked with at the time. As the person who requested it happened to live in the town I grew up in, we decided to deliver it one day on …
Our daughter says to me: “You’re not posh. You were raised posh, but you’re not posh anymore. You’re as common as muck.” How rude! For the record, I am very posh indeed. I might even say I am awfully posh. Though, of course, our daughter would respond to that: “Yes, you’re awful at being posh.” …
Do the failings of the Post Office Horizon system shock me? Hardly. Too many services commissioning technological solutions to perceived problems simply don’t understand what they’re dealing with. Usually, they’re non-techs, incapable of distinguishing marketing hype from reality. Often they will circumvent the expert advice of their tech teams, intent on proceeding regardless. The latest …
The kids think I have something to do with Spotify being unavailable this evening. I’ve told them they’re awful conspiracy theorists. Now they’re not sure. For some reason, they think I have the power to block sites or cut off the internet at will. I’ve explained that because we have 5G broadband, their websites have …
I do believe there’s an unseen metaphysical link between the words or thoughts of others and their effect of events in our lives. A couple of years ago, I think they caused me to fall flat on my face on the hard pavement, both pitting my skin with gravel and bruising my ego. I believe …
Sarafina! is the film I remember most from the early 1990s. I had it on VHS. I may even still have it, somewhere. Why is South Africa standing up for another nation today? Because they know oppression better than anyone. Who could forget the funeral scene from that movie? When they look at the events …
Standing on a doorstep in the icy cold last night, collecting our son from his study club, a friend recounted his evening commute home. His tales of a long wait for a train in the freezing evening air stirred memories within. Of those painful winter evenings at Paddington Station twenty years ago, waiting for a …
