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Free Drinks and a Vague Promise
Stop Always Going to Openings: Openings have long been the laziest way to consume art in Berlin. Free entry, a drink, and the vague promise of seeing something – even though they’re often so crowded you barely see anything at all. It has been a few years since I last went to a Grand Opening, a Vernissage, or anything even close to the Premiere of something lauded in advance, or fashionable. Music, art, fashion, installations, whatever one cares to call them, they are the bane of many, but the life blood of those in need of a quick, free finger-food and drink fix and, above all, in need of being…
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Striding Out of the Comfort Zone
What exactly is the Comfort Zone? Where does it begin, and where does it end? During my long working life I have rarely had to consider what I am happy doing and what would be too much of a change or challenge for me. We all sign up for a specific type of work, are told what it entails, and follow it, hopefully to the best of our abilities.
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Retirement: The Fast Approaching Last Day
There was a time when I would never have considered retiring and retirement, it wasn’t in the scheme of things, an unthinkable event far, far in the future. And now, here we are, with my retirement date officially set and a considerable amount of paperwork still to be completed, officialdom approached and convinced, plans set and followed through on. Yet, in the back of my mind is that thought, set in stone one sunny day back in 1969, sitting at a desk in a bleak primary school classroom in London, when I patiently worked out how old I would be in the year two thousand, and what I might be…
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The Reverse Dangers of Restaurant Reviews
Although a great lover of travelling and eating out, I rarely write reviews of the places I visit, the restaurants where I eat, the hotels I overnight in. It is enough for me that the food was enjoyable, that the room was comfortable, that the city or town had places of interest.
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A Most Respectable Lifestyle
I suspect it depends a great deal on a person's interpretation of Respectable, and whether it can be accepted for many different ways of life, or just form those in certain professions, and the former landed gentry but, as a child, it was a lifestyle which appealed to me. The fault is undoubtedly that of my grandmother - mother's side - who talked of the old ways of the professional tramp...
