basic philosophy for six-year olds ... discuss

'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.'

if the only tool in the box is a hammer, then all of your problems will begin to look like nails ...

on the way home after a nice easy eleven-and-a-half hour day !!!

apropos de nuffinque

long winter nights, long-winded rituals, and the earnest hoping there'll be enough stamps left over at the village post office tomorrow morning

polite society ... in a little back street antique shop

... although i wouldn't be surprised if she'd just told him a really filthy joke

oranges are not the only fruit

someone's going-away present ... the divill makes work for idle hands !

to wiltshire, where ellen generously gives us a rarther posh new fruit bowl ...

... complete with fruit ...

... and a battle-hardened new interloper ... "to keep those other naughty little cats in order"

wonderful

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/bronze/

http://zoolander52.tripod.com/id22.html

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1982.220.8

etc, etc.

in preparing my liver for the imminent excesses of christmas, i might just go for a simpler diet for a couple of weeks

A lovely cold day in Sussex.

Brrr !  A Turner sunrise, looking from the high part of Ashdown Forest as I drive from East Grinstead to Crowborough, seen through distant veils of falling snow.  Hills beyond hills, and their crowning woods, are silhouetted as if on fire and shrouded in smoke.

A spotted fawn and his mother nibble the icy grass on the snowy first tee of the golf course as I slowly descend the drive to the hotel at Ashdown Park.

A gaudy woodpecker swoops right past my windscreen, a flash of emerald green and yellow green, and settles less than five yards from the kerb on a sunlit bank of grass as my truck rolls slowly through a roundabout in, of all places, the busy North Terminal of Gatwick Airport.  For a moment I look down on his tightly folded wings and the great scarlet flash on his head and neck, and he looks back at me.