Tag: life

Who are the biggest influences in my life will be probably be both my emergent identity and its destiny!

December 24, 2025

My answer to this prompt question is vague, isn’t it? It deliberately employs an archaic usage of the word ‘who’ that has no clear referent but nevertheless does not explicitly ask a question? It is differentiated from tje conventional usage in the following Ai supplied dictionary definition: The archaic usage isn’t  quite complete for even … More Who are the biggest influences in my life will be probably be both my emergent identity and its destiny!

‘There’s this underlying belief that if you’re a social worker, you should just handle the pressure. If you can’t, then maybe you’re not cut out for the job’. So says a front-line UK social worker of her own profession in the magazine ‘Community Care’. Can you continue to admire such a profession?

August 3, 2025

A recent article (July 2025) in Community Care magazine instanced the stories of three social workers, whose view of the support they received from within their practice setting as a social worker forms the basis of their stories. The stories vary but are anyway all instructive if read carefully. Note here my care in not … More ‘There’s this underlying belief that if you’re a social worker, you should just handle the pressure. If you can’t, then maybe you’re not cut out for the job’. So says a front-line UK social worker of her own profession in the magazine ‘Community Care’. Can you continue to admire such a profession?

Retiring? Never and always simultaneously and repetitively is the only answer, however contradictory that is!

June 14, 2025

In the Elizabethan theatre a secluded space off stage and curtained, or otherwise partitioned off, and called a ‘tiring house’ acted as as a place in which actors went when they left the stage on which they performed their role or roles: it served two purposes. It was a place in which actors changed their … More Retiring? Never and always simultaneously and repetitively is the only answer, however contradictory that is!

The ‘pattern of all patience’ is not to ‘say nothing’ but to ask and expect nothing.

February 11, 2025

This blog prompt is almost identical to a earlier one (see my answer here at this link). The title there was: What is the greatest gift someone could give you? Put yourself in a prompter’s shoes! What difference did they see in the prompts? Well, first, the question asked then for a chosen ‘one’ out … More The ‘pattern of all patience’ is not to ‘say nothing’ but to ask and expect nothing.

Check your inner monitor for ambivalence!

February 1, 2025

I get some news!The first thing IDo, without thoughtApparentlyIs carelesslyInterpret it. News that you receive oft takes a moment to interpret. Is it good? is it bad? Or is it somewhere in between. Perhaps the news contains a mixture of good, bad, or nuanced degrees between positive and negative interpretation as well as a mixture … More Check your inner monitor for ambivalence!

Why offer me a dream of doing what might be better never done.

January 19, 2025

The idea of winning the lottery – or winning the pools as was the norm when when I was a child and before the advent of a state lottery in the UK – may have appealed once as an means of evoking impossible resolutions to real problems – real or relative poverty, economic insecurity and … More Why offer me a dream of doing what might be better never done.

‘When will I, will I be famous?’: A blog on the question of desired ‘fame’.

January 9, 2025

The song by Bros ‘When will I, will I be famous?’ with lyrics by Tom Watkins and Nicky Graham seems silly enough when it gets into your head like the ear worm it is. But I often find that seeing the lyrics in print rather changes how you read and interpret it, when not driven … More ‘When will I, will I be famous?’: A blog on the question of desired ‘fame’.

The ‘happiness Tsar’: the ideology of well-being despite every circumstance.

December 12, 2024

Photo by Rick Pushinsky of Richard Layard: the ‘happiness Tsar’ under the Tony Blair regime from Annie Maccoby Berglof article in ‘The Financial Times’ ( September 12 2014) available at: https://www.ft.com/content/b1d0b140-3386-11e4-85f1-00144feabdc0 We hear much less of ‘happiness’ since the termination of the Blair-Brown government but perhaps it will return under Keir Starmer, who needs an ideology to … More The ‘happiness Tsar’: the ideology of well-being despite every circumstance.

We need to defend ourselves, not peevishly from others, but from our ‘pet peeves’.

November 18, 2024

The Parade website contains a page (use that link to see it yourself) listing 75 potential ‘pet peeves’/ It defines this strange concept thus: “What is a “pet peeve”?  Dictionary.com defines a pet peeve as “a particular and often continual annoyance; personal bugbear: This train service is one of my pet peeves.” They tend to be behaviours … More We need to defend ourselves, not peevishly from others, but from our ‘pet peeves’.