I came across this blog today: https://heardandfelt.wordpress.com/
It’s got some good thought provoking content but I feel I’m being short changed because the author doesn’t tell me much about him/herself. I sense it’s a woman, apologies if I’m wrong, and she introduces the concept of her ‘gratitude list’. Nothing deep or profound about this but it’s a reminder to think positively and, perhaps more importantly, to recognise that life/the world/our experiences are continuously evolving. This means that today’s list is not the same as the one you might have compiled some weeks or months ago and that the next one is going to be different as well.
Anyway here’s mine and it’s heavily influenced by recent weeks. In no particular order …
James Naughtie: he’s a BBC radio journalist of course but I’ve just discovered him as an author and I’m nearing the end of his second book (I’ve just taken delivery of the first) ‘the Spy Across the Water’. It’s my sort of book, well structured prose, plenty of context and fully formed characters. It’s a spy story out of the le Carre mold but with a full political backdrop.
Neither old nor bitter: this is a bit of a misnomer. If we were honest we’d call ourselves ‘old but not bitter’. That’s ‘we’ as in Martin Rigby, who I might have described as a soft Tory in my political canvassing days, Huw Jones, who would always be hard Labour, and myself. We meet for lunch every two months or so, we enjoy good food at the Boot, they enjoy pints of bitter whereas I eschew my Lib Dem roots and opt for a single glass of wine, and we debate at length with lots of agreement and inevitable disagreements.
Bird song: we live on the edge of the Green Belt and across the road from our house is Long Meadow, one of the Abbey Fields which I was involved in buying for the community thereby enusring that it would never be built on. Every day I walked into the field and stand and listen to the bird song. Colleagues can tell you which bird is singing what. I can’t but I’ve got an App, Merlin, which does the job for me. Today we heard robins (we hear them everyday), wrens and great tits.
Streaming services: there’s lots of good TV out there but much of it is not on BBC or ITV and it’s spread around different providers. So it’s not ideal because I really don’t want to take out multiple subscriptions, that’s how £10 a month becomes £50 rather quickly. What I’ve had to do instead is dip in and out so we’ve had an Apple subscription for three months primarily to watch the excellent Slow Horses. We’ve now closed that down, recognising that we’ll have to renew it at the year end for series 4, and now it’s Disney for Shogun.
Good coffee: I do breakfast with a cup of tea but I feel that my body doesn’t really fire up until I’ve had a first coffee of the day. Often that’s at home, we have a de Longhi coffee machine, but the choice outside is getting better and better. Just this month I’ve discovered Dulcedo Social in Eddington, Hot Numbers in Melbourn (picture top) and Coffee World in Milton. I’ve also revisited Tishka on Chesterton Road and Fitzbillies by Magdalene Bridge.
That’s it. I’ll set a reminder to revisit this in three months when it should be a different list.
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