England – Page 3 – For the fainthearted . . .

Pirates did talk like that because that’s the way they did talk

I am very disappointed.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day which falls in September each year is one of my favourite annual observances. However, last week National Geographic magazine cast doubt on the sort of meaningful exchanges that mark the day. In an article titled, . .”Forget ‘walking the plank.’ Pirate portrayals—from Blackbeard to Captain Kidd—are more fantasy than fact“, National Geographic presents persuasive arguments to challenge our perceptions of pirates.

However, there is one section of the article with which I take issue. Under the heading, ‘Pirate …

Confused

Pietro Russell, whose life is narrated in twenty-six episodes in Sebastian Faulks’ novel, A Fool’s Alphabet, visits Jerusalem in 1982. The deep antipathy towards the other he senses in each of the communities leaves him confused. His liberal English upbringing had not equipped him to cope with deep antagonism.

In childhood Pietro had liked to choose a side to support in any debate, even if it turned out to be the ‘wrong’ one – the Roundheads, the Southern States, Sonny Liston, even, when he was older, George McGovern. When a

…

French on a spring evening

There was a feeling of being at a French provincial airport, which was odd because I have visited no more than a handful of the airports dotted around France.

Perhaps the feeling arose from the balmy sense of the April evening. There was actually an element of warmth in the air at Lulsgate Bottoms. Sunshine reflected off of the fuselages of the parked aircraft of the low fares airlines. It could almost be somewhere in the French midi, were the landscapes around not such deep shades of green.

The shuttle …

Morse wisdom

Of course, Morse had to die in 2000. When John Thaw was diagnosed with cancer, there was no option other than for Inspector Morse to die.

It would have been unthinkable that anyone else might have played the part. To have given the part to another actor would not have worked, Thaw captured Morse so perfectly that his face and character would fill the pages of Colin Dexter’s novels.

Remorseful Day was the final novel and television episode. Morse dies through a massive cardiac arrest.

“Inspector Morse is dead,” shouts …

Prejudiced teachers

It was lunchtime in our staff room and I was sat reading, oblivious to the conversation around me.

The voice of one of our twenty-something teachers caught my attention, “Ian’s sat reading his phone.”

“I am. It’s a very good piece in the FT.”

“What’s the FT?”

“The Financial Times,” commented one of the other teachers.

“Ian! Why do you read the Financial Times?” asked the twenty-something.

“Because it tells the truth – and the piece is not about money, it’s about teaching. It’s about ageism …

29th December 1940

My grandfather was a gentle and dapper man who died from cancer at the age of 65. In memory, he is sat in his fireside chair sorting through the stamp collection he had built up over the years, or he is in his garden tending chrysanthemums, or working in his greenhouse, or weeding the rows of vegetables. He was quiet, very softly spoken, it would have been hard to imagine he had ever raised his voice. He would have been uneasy in our current age of nostalgia for he never …