Monthly Archive: August 2023

Lighten up

In times of turmoil and uncertainty, there’s a need to lighten up. Not necessarily with beer. But Derek Watts, an old friend who died last week, sums it up in...

Beautiful Zimbabwe. All is not lost. Yet

Check this out on a somewhat fraught national elections day    Here’s an absolutely stunning video. To plagiarise David Livingstone, angels in flight must be gazing on scenes as lovely...

Heroism

The national holiday this week, Heroes’ Day, remembers fallen freedom fighters and their surviving, now-elderly brothers and sisters.  In the words of the ancient Chinese masters, a guerrilla must swim...

Man buys comb

  The comb is for tidying a new beard gown to distract you from my thinning cheeks and jowls, the side effects of weakened health and aging. Before the chin...

A great loss …

Farewell Jane Birkin, singer and actress dead at the age of 76 in Paris. To those of us initiates in our distant Bohemian days, she was born British, in Chelsea...

Last Tango in Paris

My quota of three grave professional errors – erreurs graves professionelles – had been used up. It was the end of a quiet night shift, the slot (duty editor) and I...