there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
I UNDERSTAND that I don’t understand, but I stand (Black Lives Matter demo banner) On Saturday 13 June, early afternoon, I turned idly to Twitter to see what was going on ‘out there’ and began […]
Sheffield AS lockdown got underway, with an understandable focus on physical wellbeing, attention also turned to emotional and psychological impact. Quite suddenly, routines were forced to change, ‘real’ social contact was only with those in […]
Sheffield The thing about Johnson is that he desperately wanted to become prime minister, and he desperately wanted to have been prime minister. It’s just the bit in between he struggles with (Marina Hyde). BORIS […]
Sheffield IN 1908, just short of 15, my maternal grandmother Elizabeth Smith began her apprenticeship to become a dressmaker. In due course she passed her skills to her daughters (once by throwing a half-made dress […]
Sheffield THE silence, solitude and slower pace of life that accompany some people’s lockdowns are potentially nurturing. Those of us who choose to live alone anyway do it because it suits us. Also, according to […]
Sheffield Maybe if we were to take down all the road signs, the virus would find it harder to get about? (John Crace’s Twitter response to the government’s change of approach, 10 May 2020) ‘STAY […]
Sheffield WHILE humans altered everything on the face of the world, these birds kept believing in a map that never changed (from Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, 2018) One of the restorative parts of my daily […]
Sheffield I HAD established a generally happy routine in my ‘semi-retirement’ over the last two years. It contained very predictable blocks of time, providing structure to the week, the rest being open to choice and […]
Sheffield PROFESSOR Anthony Costello forecasts 40 000 deaths and the highest death rate in Europe, and the Sunday Times (19 April 2020) features an article ‘Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster’. We were […]
Sheffield I LIVE on a side street off one of the major arterial roads in Sheffield, this particular bit being a hub of bars, cafes and restaurants. It is a Sheffield thing to ‘go down […]