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Yesterday I went on the first of an 8 week "Condition Management Programme". I knew how the day was going to be - been there done it loads of times over the years on various study courses, training things etc, but sometimes you just have to "play the game". The first "activity" was "breaking the ice". I immediately said - oh, are we going to ask each other what animal we would choose to be ? To which I was told..no, no ! Its not that sort of thing ! Well it was that sort of thing, only we told our partners our fave food, film, who we would like to meet, where we would choose to be and then reported back our partners info. I know I am cynical about most things (and I really have done this stuff TOO many times) but still can't get over how others define us, or why we feel the need to define people. By just chatting naturally, we could easily have broken the ice, I am sure, but now I am "Brenda who likes salad, would like to be in her back...

In a recent pub quiz (in which I had the dubious role of being question master) one of the trivia type questions was this – A Boeing 747 weighs approximately the same as how many African elephants ? 25, 55, 125, or 225 ? Yes, I know – a rather silly question that not many people need to know the answer to, except perhaps someone who has the task of transporting a couple of African Elephants on a Boeing 747 – but this was a pub quiz remember. Anyway, great consternation went around the room together with a discussion on what one elephant might possibly weigh (Ok, there was also discussion on whether the question master had gone totally doollally, but that’s a different blog topic) Some people said they had no idea and couldn’t even give a wild guess. Others started talking about what could they relate the weight to - how many “average” men/women would be the same weight as one average elephant? Could we translate this into how many people would be the same weight as a plane and work it...

Think of the word house. Should the indefinite article before it be “a” or “an”? And what about “a historic event”, or should that be “an historic “ ? Discussing this issue (recently on Writer’s News Talkback) it seems that general opinion is that “an house” sounds quite wrong, and that we use 'an' before words that begin with a vowel - apple, egg, icicle, umbrella …..you know what the vowels are ….but also before words that sound as if they begin with a vowel eg. hour, heir, honest and others that begin with a silent “h”. Then there’s words such as uniform and unit, that clearly begin with a vowel but are not pronounced as such , so “a” is used before them. "An hotel" is still used on some occasions. Which to me always was and still is ridiculous. By trying to say "an hotel" we end up dropping the aitch, and it comes out as "an 'otel" which can't be right - unless you are acting in "allo, allo". I used to have lengthy discussi...

What do you do with a group of people who continually rebel against you for putting up a twenty feet high concrete wall just feet away from their home, preventing them from getting to their land, their work, their family ? Well you could cut off their water and their electricity when ever you felt like it, without their knowledge. Or you could burst into people’s homes and arrest them for some alleged crime such as throwing rocks at your soldiers. If they try to intervene you could shoot them at close range with rubber- coated steel bullets. This might smash their jaw, fracture their skull or blind them if you get them right in the eye. This is what Israeli soldiers did to a man in the Palestinian West Bank town of Nilin, 3 weeks ago. It is a miracle that the man is alive – losing his sight in only one eye is little consolation, I think. After an “investigation” Israel has decided that the soldier acted properly in firing the shots, when the man tried to prevent his brother from being ...

Today my website has had 991 hits to date ! Now I am not saying this is an incredible achievement, or even any achievement at all on my part. But it is sort of exciting. Hits does not exactly mean visits, and visits also does not mean that those visitors even got past clicking on the browser bar, let alone reading or digesting anything on the site or blog But I know some have and I can go as far as to say that I know many have read bits or all of the site and certainly have had thoughts about my thoughts - and commented on them. So this I feel, entitles me to feel more than a little pleased and gives me a sense of purpose to my ramblings - which on a bad day feel (and maybe are, on a bad day!) no different/better/worse/worthy of putting down , than any one else's. But my whole idea of having a website and blog was/is for communication. It is my big "thing" in life - that we communicate, however poorly or unecessarily this may seem to some people, sometimes. (Communicat...

As from today anyone wishing to be married has a greater choice of the venue following new rules from the Anglican Church Where previously couples could get married in a church only if they attended regularly or lived in the parish, it will now be easier to have their wedding service in a church where they have a family or special connection – anywhere they have lived for six months or where their parents or grandparents were married. The Bishop of Reading says “ People who are serious about getting married naturally want a marriage ceremony and a setting which is equally serious - only the Church provides this”. Perhaps, but if you are that serious about getting married, does it really matter where this happens, or rather in which church it happens? A church is a church. Granted, many are more beautifully situated, historically connected or architecturally significant. But isn’t the idea that the marriage is taking place in the presence of God ? And surely, God is all around and ever...