One of the things I have discovered over the last year or so, and something which has proven me and many others wrong on so many counts, is the idea that smart people – however you might wish to define the word – do not end up in prison. Sometimes it can be exactly those…

Conversations would be the most boring pastime ever if we all had the same information, on the same topics, and held the same opinion. Fine, there are probably a few other things which are equally or more tedious and which make us yawn broadly just at the mere mention of their name, but at least…

It’s one of those strange things in life which comes up now and then: someone writes to me, tells me a little story about how things are going for them and what has been happening recently, and it mixes in perfectly with what has been happening to me. Or someone makes a comment about a…

I’m going to put myself out on a limb here and make a guess which could be seen as a generalisation, which could be both disapproved and disproved by some people, and which might almost seem to be commonsense but, in reality, it is something which needs to be said and thought about to be…

If there is one thing which scares a letter writer more than that blank page, it is the thought that they have worked hard, sometimes for hours, and produced a piece of prose worthy of the highest accolades, only to have it lost in the postal system somewhere. We all hear of the stories where…

I’ve always been fascinated by the opinions people hold of themselves, much more than those they have of other people who they might or might not know which, though often honest and forthright when brought out, tend to be very limited according to what a person has personally seen of that other man or woman,…

If there is one thing that I have discovered in my many years of life on this small rock, hurtling through space, it is that there is no one who is not interesting, but hundreds, if not thousands of people who believe that their lives are boring, that they have nothing to say, that other…

Zarathustra seems to be following my every move of late, not so much lurking in the background and sending strange thoughts into my mind on spirituality, belief, dogma and the Enlightenment, but more springing out where I least expect him and stunning me with the source of his words. But even this is not quite…

I would go a few steps further than the old ‘don’t believe everything you read’ and suggest that people should only truly trust that which can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, and remain sceptical of everything else, not so much to remove any level of trust people might have, but to inspire…

When I think about how hard it is to live with someone you love and cherish, I find it easier to envision the problems which can arise when you are forced to spend time, without little hope of reprieve, with someone who is not so high on your wish list. I used to think it…