If we didn’t have a past, we would have no memories and nothing to shape our future on; we would be hollow shells with nothing to talk about, with nothing to share with other people; we would have nothing from which we can learn and no salacious and intimate details with which we, when we…

I’m not sure whether we have slid calmly into the new year, or been dragged into it, although for me it was a quiet and sedate affair, fireworks across the town at midnight, the cat on my lap tearing up my jeans with its claws, and a glass of red wine near at hand. I…

The wonderful thing about letter writing is that no one knows you have an accent. This highly unoriginal saying is taken from an equally unoriginal one: in the internet no one knows you’re a dog, and merely tells us that with the internet, as with letter writing, we can be whoever we wish to be,…

One of the failings of the human beast is not to recognise and accept their own limitations, not just with respect to strength and speed which are easy enough to assess and measure against other people, but in regard to intellectual abilities. Every single person has their upper limit, but very few accept this as…

One of my greatest pleasures in life, apart from writing letters and travelling, is reading. There is rarely a time, day or night, that I do not have a book in my hands and, while I might not be able to read at any point in time, it is always there for those free moments…

I wonder where we would all be without second chances, whether the world would grind to a halt, or whether those who really are more attuned to life and all it needs would simply disappear from the surface of the Earth, finding no more use for their talents, because second chances are unacceptable. There is…

I didn’t overplay Christmas this year, although that is probably true of the last few years too, and one of the great advantages of living alone and having already done most of it. Christmas this last year was a time of relaxation for me, and I didn’t even need to hide away and avoid invitations,…

We have, hopefully, the stress and strain of the new year and its celebrations , or commiserations, behind us and can look forward, with baby eyes if you wish to believe those who claim that an old man stands looking back at the end of the year and an innocent child looking into the new,…

If we are going to enter this new year in any form at all, then it should definitely be one where we are prepared to seek out and accept challenges, no matter how outlandish or difficult they may appear to be. We should set aside our worries and our fears, leave behind the belief that…

The new year appears to have approached, been and gone without too many problems, as if anything would pause it or set it back a few days so that the organisers, whoever they may be, could get it right on the night! It was heralded in Germany by the normal display of fireworks lighting up…