The Random Blogger

Now that Christmas Day has been and gone for yet another year, I reflect on the fact that in my new life, thousands of miles from my place of birth and residence for over 40 years, I don’t miss the “festivities” one single bit!

As a child, my main recollection of Christmas Day was being dragged around to see a seemingly infinite number of “aunts”, some of whom were family and some of whom were not, which was particularly boring.

And although we did many of the things that you’re meant to do at this time of year, I always felt (more…)

In the distant past, when I was at school, I have to confess that geography was one of the subjects in which I had little interest, as well as not being very good. (History and science were among the other subjects I found boring and or pointless.)

However, since leaving school, I did a bit of travelling, mainly on holiday, and became much better read, and my knowledge of the world improved dramatically.

As part of my interest in mnemonics, I even learned the capital cities of every country in the world (well, almost), as well as the capitals of each US state, amongst other arguably useless facts.

So I was delighted, today, to come across a (more…)

The BBC’s report of a judge’s decision not to jail nine men guilty of raping a 10-year-old girl in an Aboriginal community has triggered outrage in Australia, and I’m not surprised.

I rarely even read the news, only happening to see this headline on Google’s home page by chance, and it’s even rarer for me to want to put virtual pen to virtual paper to comment on it, but this one is so wrong that it’s hard to know where to begin.

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The older I get, the more I feel I have in common with grumpy old men, the most well-known of whom has to be Victor Meldrew from the very popular One Foot In The Grave sit-com, although I am also reminded of the TV series of the same name, that was also both funny and sad at the same time.

I’m not sure whether the younger generation really (more…)

I spent over 20 years of my life working for a couple of large companies, rising to a reasonably senior level before deciding it was time to jump off the corporate hamster wheel, and as anybody who knew me would freely tell you, I was rarely available on the phone when they tried to call.

Why?

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