Goodbye To All That

The move from 2018 to 2019 means we're out from under the shadow of the Great War. No more centenaries of peculiarly horrible battles- or at least not for another 96 years- by which time we may have other things on our minds.

Life What Is It But A Dream?

It wasn't a particularly memorable dream. I was meeting up with people in various locations- some who ignored me because they were busy- like the transgender activist I'd gone to visit in her Yorkshire council house- and some who knew me, though I wasn't so sure about them. I got asked about my ex-wife and her partner. "They're living in Walsingham" I said- which isn't true- and an Indian person congratulated me on my translation of a Hindi poem. "Can you suggest others I might have a go at?" I asked- and he walked off into the library as if to fetch me a book. The most interesting thing about it was the feeling it left me with on waking that I'd just come out of the real world and was back in a world of illusion.

The Right Stuff

The TV journalist was trying to get the former NASA astronaut to say how frightening it was that the Chinese had landed a machine on the dark side of the Moon and he said (in so many words) "I've trained and lived alongside Russian and Chinese cosmonauts- and none of us was interested in national prestige or military advantage; we were doing what we did on behalf of Humanity."