Monthly Archives: February 2021

Cures from a bottle

Sainsbury’s has a startling range of bottles of olive oil. How many types of olive oil do people need? Can most of the customers surveying the choices tell the difference between one sort and the other? When I was a … Continue reading

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Remembering a storyteller on Ash Wednesday

Suffering asthma severe enough to be dispatched from my Somerset home to the pure air of Dartmoor, I remember days on the moor when the outside world could have ceased to exist, the snow was so deep, Then the winter … Continue reading

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December taste on Shrove Tuesday

If the sense of smell is deeply connected with memory, is there a similar connection between memory and the sense of taste? Biting into a Cadbury’s Twirl, there was a moment of being transported back in time, perhaps more than … Continue reading

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Games people play

Sitting, waiting, there was a hint of warmth in the February sun and birdsong was audible. The view did not match the vernal cheer: a high wooden planked fence, greyed with age and holed in places; a scrubby hedgerow unrecovered … Continue reading

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Never cool

For a few weeks, in the spring of 1981, I tried to be trendy, or whatever was the appropriate word forty years ago. I can date my trendy period very precisely. I dropped out of my undergraduate studies at the … Continue reading

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