Occasionally a phrase in a news story or online article brings me up short and demands to be noted and preserved in some way.
The phrase that caught my attention this week comes from an article on the current all-time high of double births, which has been so widely reported under headlines that use the phrase “Twins peak” that I can only assume that is an exact quotation from a press release.
Continue reading “counting on it”
Yesterday I went out to the local shop at lunchtime. I was in a bit of a hurry as I had come out of one virtual meeting later than expected and had to hurry back for another. But I got to the shop, bought the couple of things I needed, and set off home before I realised I didn’t have my phone.
I paused in the middle of the street and did a quick mental check of pockets and was shocked to realise there was no way I’d dropped it or left it in the shop: I must have left my phone at home.
Continue reading “what a difference a week makes”
This last year, as there haven’t been any opportunities to go to meetings in person, I’ve been doing a lot of “virtual networking”. I used to attend face-to-face events regularly, and after the first couple, I was reasonably comfortable walking into a room of strangers and starting a conversation. But it’s been difficult to re-create the atmosphere and dynamic of a physical meeting in an online situation.
It’s certainly all a lot easier than it was back in spring last year, and everyone is a lot more confident about being seen on screen, but the hosts are still uncertain who will turn up and how experienced they will be in the virtual world, so they often fall back on fairly simple ice-breaker activities.
Continue reading “desire towards the ‘otherness’”
Yesterday, I ended the blog post with a photograph of rose hips craning their necks to reach between the uprights of a black iron fence. It made me think just how many such photos I have, of flowers and fences.
I don’t actually have many photos of anything on the computer I’m using at the moment – they are mostly copied off onto an external drive- But even among the few that I can access quickly, I have found enough to confirm that, as a general rule, plants appear to want to escape the caged confines that humans impose on them.
Continue reading “flowers & fences”
I usually check the weather forecast when I get up in the morning, although I’m really not very sure why, as they inevitably get it wrong. And sometimes the outlook is so very, very bleak that it’s better not to know what’s in store.
This morning, according to the BBC, the day was set to be grey. Not wet; not thick black cloud. Just grey. There was no sign of sunshine or rain or snow. Nothing but monotonous grey.
Continue reading “something to look forward to”
don't confuse the narrator 