Grombles

This morning I met Tony. He works for a company who unblock drains, so quite a messy job, but curiously satisfying when the blockage is removed. Anyway, he was a very chatty chap and while he was flushing out years of accumulated unmentionables from our pipes, he told me about a previous job he had working for a rail company. The story went that he had been made redundant and his wife passed on an ad to become a train guard. He thought 'why not?', so signed up and loved the job. One day, following a challenging train delay that he needed to delicately manage, he got a knock on his door to be confronted by a passenger. "How can I help you sir?" he asked. "I thought I'd let you know how well you dealt with that situation", the chap replied. "Well done!". Turned out he was the chairman of the rail company. A day or two later, Tony was called into his bosses office and told that he had been recommended to become a guard trainer. Promotion and more ...

Grow some food Share some food Eat some food Bonk Sleep Repeat Why over-complicate things?

My family, along with the rest of the world, is hooked on Wordle. Every morning my wife, three children and various partners, jump on their screens to be the best that day at guessing Wordle in the least steps. Care now needs to be taken to make sure a) no-one knows your favourite starting word (so when you publish the blank result, they don't all get a free first line), and b) you change it regularly so they can't eventually work it out. Probably best to alternate your 2 favourites (so you don't have to keep working out good starters containing common letters). If they're not certain you've started with your favourite, they'll not bother trying to work out what you've used. After a while (we're now into several weeks of competition), you begin to get a feel for the sneaky way the game creator likes to use words that don't sound like they're spelled or where he (James Wardle ... oddly) uses rare combinations of letters. Actually, knowing that he...

 I have often used quotes from Abe Lincoln to illustrate a point. For example I always believed he said "You can't make the poor rich, by making the rich poor" and I've been using this quote for years to help explain why I favour capitalism over socialism (whilst nonetheless being an egalitarian). Trouble is, as I've only just learned, he never actually said this. It's the sort of quote you believe someone like him might have made, if only they'd have thought of it.... Which reminds me. Neil Armstrong actually said "One small step for man, one VAST leap for mankind". Not "... one GIANT leap..." as he's traditionally quoted. Check it out for yourself here . What Lincoln did in fact say was admittedly similar to my 'poor rich, rich poor' quip:  “You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.”  which I'll agree is not so different, except it only relates to work and employment. He also said: “You can’t m...

I subscribe to Newsweek Magazine. As its name states, it's a weekly magazine broadly arranged like a blog with articles rarely longer than a few pages, covering highly topical subjects such as cyberwarfare, Trump's legacy, vaccine science and the like, all from an American perspective. I strongly recommend you subscribe at https://subscribe.newsweek.com/ . In their Christmas 2021 issue they published a list of 50 people (or partnerships) whom they describe as 'agents for change' or 'disruptors', the most famous of whom is Elon Musk - considered the Thomas Edison of the digital age. It makes for a fascinating wander through what the world is turning into from many points of view, but especially new technologies, new politics, new awareness of the planet's fragility, new fashions, new fears and new excitements. Many of their choices raise further questions about what we are turning into such as overweight couch potatoes; superfluous actors in a world of robots...

I've just finished reading and thoroughly appreciating (can I enjoy a book about Alzheimer's?) Still Alice by Lisa Genova . I was fortunate enough to have been in this TED audience in 2018 when Lisa, herself a TED delegate, told us her story. Still Alice is a fictional account told from the perspective of a middle-aged Harvard Professor who develops Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease (EOAD). The reason Lisa picked EOAD rather than the far more common form of Alzheimer's affecting up to 80% of people suffering dementia ( 8% of us will probably develop dementia ) was to explore how a woman in the prime of her life (career, marriage, family etc) might experience progressively losing everything she previously took for granted, whereas we might expect elderly people to have already lost memory functions as well as their careers and possibly their spouses by the time they develop the disease. It was a powerful and deeply moving story which I commend everyone to read. It echoed ...

Following the overwhelming response to my post about advice for golf hackers , the one comment it received suggested I offer similar advice for tennis players. So here are some ideas to get it started. Whackers... players who aspire to be Rafa, Roger or Serena but remain perspiring, awkward dreamers probably nursing tennis elbows, dodgy knees and arthritic hips, and regularly deflated egos. Grunt. All top players expel a noisy grunt after every shot to prove to spectators, opponents and coaches that a maximum amount of effort has been expended to serve or return a shot. Failure to grunt proves a lack of effort and commitment even if the ball is out or the point lost. At least he/she tried hard to win it. Whackers, on the other hand, have neither spectators (other than those patiently waiting to use the court) or coaches to worry about. So the grunt is solely intended to scare the opponent, to disguise the sound of ball on frame, or it's actually a squeal of pain rather than the sig...