it’s complicated**

“[T]here is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

As Shakespeare clearly understood when he had Hamlet say the above line, everything in life is affected by our personal perspective.

And our perspective depends very much on where we were born and brought up, and on the social and family values we were exposed to as children. Even beauty is a learned concept.
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things forgotten

It’s quicker and easier to look things up online than in the weighty volumes of the Oxford Universal Dictionary over on the bookshelf, so I’ve just found the definition of “apostrophe” on dictionary .com and it pretty much sums up this blog:

a digression in the form of an address to someone not present […]

After all, you who are reading this are not present, and that first paragraph is itself a digression: I intended to start here at the Old School House –

old school house – and continue by commenting that when I wrote yesterday’s post apostrophising and being (dia)critical of the local school leavers’ fête and the sad inadequacies of modern education, I had forgotten that my original idea was to write about St Swithin’s Day, which had passed unremarked the day before.
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attitudes

Sometimes, all you seem to be able to focus on are the thistles:

cardo : thistle Continue reading “attitudes”

april

SunsetI rather think April, with its traditional alternating showers and sunshine, should be the Brits’ favourite month, as it gives us plenty of weather to talk about. This year, it’s done even better than usual, with snow, hail and torrential rain highlighting some mild summery days, beautiful crisp mornings and glorious sunsets.
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bright beginnings

I usually only post to the blog at the weekend, and I’ve already posted this Saturday and Sunday’s updates. But I don’t think the picture of a mouldering red chili pepper that accompanies the last post is quite what I want to stay as the top image for the first week of the New Year.

So, in an attempt to brighten things up, here is a photo of a rather fresher red pepper that seemed to reveal an appropriately seasonal enthusiasm for life, growth and general personal development when I cut it open:

red bell pepper cut through centre