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…

I am told that most people will continue writing the year down as 2017 for another six weeks or so, that the habit of an entire year’s writing is unlikely to be changed so quickly, and that they will feel annoyed each time it happens, and promise to better themselves. Perhaps this is the one…

I will admit, it is a very strange feeling being passed from one person to the next, and not knowing what is going to happen, whether there will be a reply, or whether a new name will appear on a letter heading. My first thought was that this is something like a young woman at…

There are two things we need to remember about this festive season: gratitude for what we have; thoughts for those in need. It is almost impossible to accept one without the other, and both should be ingrained on our brains, in our attitudes, in the manner and style we live in not just during the…

One of the favourite insults used against me by Germans, those who do not know me and have never had the opportunity to work alongside me, is that, before speaking to them again, before having anything to do with them, I should learn their language. This is not because I cannot read, write and speak…

Having said all that I did before, I must also add that sometimes knowing the context of a piece of work takes a great deal away from it. Sometimes it is far more revealing when the artist challenges their viewers and readers to explain what they find in a work, what it reminds them of,…

The idea of a soul, of a force within us which continues after our bodies have given up the fight and lie rotting in the grave, has been followed by some of the greatest minds known to man, since man began to consider the possibility of there being more than just life on this planet….

You write, in your latest mail, of things which make me glad to be single and living alone, which reinstate my opinion that I was right to choose this path and not allow a hoard of other people to share my space, to take over my home and treat it as their own. I suspect…