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David Gauke: My Part in Not Preventing His Downfall
Before I had reached the end of the driveway the door opened and a man in his seventies shouted after me “He’s a traitor!” It seemed that not all voters had embraced Gauke’s idea of a more thoughtful and respectful style of politics. I was reluctant to engage: I was…
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Night visits
I’m staying in a large house, York maybe, perhaps I own it, and there’s a small hatch leading off a landing to a suite of larger rooms which are nicer but neglected, and I wonder, am I allowed to go there and why don’t I use them more often
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Nain
I am lucky to remember all four of our grandparents, although Nain – Maggie as she was known – is the one I remember least well, as she died when I was seven.
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elementary
if I could give a longer list of elements I surely would, of others that I may have missed no news has come to chorleywood
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Please don’t
Please don’t wave the Union Flag around as if you own it, or as if you speak for everyone in the UK. It is the flag of a country whose people have many different opinions.
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Concerning inconsistency in the London and Boston Marathon qualifying times
Welcome to the unforgiving world of athletics age grading.
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king commode and his expanding rubber band, Watford Grammar School for Boys – 1st April 1969
I had no yardstick by which to measure the quality of the live music I heard that night, fifty years ago. But to my impressionable young ears, it was the best thing, ever. Thank you guys.
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Dr Feelgood, Cambridge Corn Exchange – 25 September 1976
…they were prophets come to lead us to a better future, or a better past, and I reached for them, a parched wanderer at an oasis.
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Everly Brothers, Royal Albert Hall – Thursday 22 September 1983
“Do you think they’ll get it?” asked the brothers. The reply came back from their British hosts “Are you nuts? They’ll go crazy!”
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Led Zeppelin, Empire Pool, Wembley – 21 November 1971
It was electrifying: I had never heard anything like it, and somehow by the end of their first song tears had welled up from sheer excitement and joy.
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The Golden Tree of St Francis
A woman was screaming. Pitched halfway between fear and anger, loud and sustained. An adult woman, Dan thought, yet there was a note of petulance, the suggestion of a toddler tantrum.
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run places
in my run places I’m lost in effort and pass through in seconds but later picture myself there and yearn to be back and when I cannot visit them I ache to be there
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The Bream and the Mule
At this point Rob perhaps sensed I was getting a little overwrought, and suggested, probably by way of distraction, that I might enjoy trying to incorporate the words on the board into a poem.
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The Mull and Iona trilogy
Rachel went to eat a sandwich Of chicken, bread and basil, and which Once her appetite was sated From her stomach separated Embarking on its own romantic Trip across the North Atlantic.
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A brush with greatness – Sir David Attenborough
Some say you should never meet your heroes. Nonsense. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity.
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Fall of the House of
I was shown into a meeting room with wood panelling and oil-painted landscapes: an unconvincing attempt to recreate an English country house interior in the docklands clouds.
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Two photographs from 1934
If you have stood on a mountainside and seen birds flying way below perhaps you experienced a feeling of dominion, tempered by vertigo, the exhilaration and surprise of something seen from an unfamiliar perspective.
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Finish line
Negative thoughts swim in. When my Garmin reaches sixteen miles, my first thought is great, only ten more miles to go. But no, the official marker is still point one of a mile away. And the distance is 26.2, not 26. Somehow that 0.3 acquires a crushing weight in my…
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Ramblings 