The debonair Basil Marigold's

It had started to get warmer and lighter, yet a few days ago it became really cold again. It is forecast that the next week will, again, be more winter than spring. Below Zero is forecast.  I was beginning to think that I should start packing my trousers away until November. I have postponed this for at least a week now.  The last two days have been gloriously sunny, but just so cold. 

He saw it rolled up on a charity shop table.  A magnetic darts board in a tube, with 6 darts. It was priced at £2. My son at the time asked if he could have it, but I had no money. So we carried on shopping. Today he wanted to go out and so raided his piggy bank for the £2 and proceeded to buy his first ever darts board. It has on one side a normal darts board, on the other it is a target board and it rolls up into a tube. Ideal for holidays!  The darts are just perfect for him, not me! and he has hung it on his bedroom door and has plodded away throwing his green and blue magnetic darts at it this evening. As an added bonus, it also helps his counting as he has to work out what a double amount might be, what his scores add up too. It encourages his maths skills without him realising. He just wants to play darts!  So, he seems a happy little Moleman. And maybe one day he might be Champion of the world!

It was recently Valentine’s Day. It is a day to celebrate your loved one. If you do not have a loved one you tend to have to buy your car a card. The driver for valentines, which like every type of festival has been caught and turned into a huge pressure event. If you don’t have a loved one, then you cannot participate. The commercialisation can make people feel alone and apart, a failure if you will.  I’m not sure how many valentines I have shared with anyone else. It was never a day that meant much. I know my grandfather died on Valentine’s Day. That wasn’t a happy event. He died in a street in Mansfield holding flowers for my Nannar. He’d never really bought her flowers. But, on the day he tried that happened.  However, Valentine’s Day presents, we are told by TV and social media now are; chocolates, wine - the popular tipple now being Prosecco, jewellery, etc.  I though, I got an immensely practical gift. I was bought a flask. Not any old flask, but in my humble opini...

My son, who is now seven. As he once said, 'I have been six a very long now'. Now though, he is seven. He is happy with this. One day we had a boys day out to the local shop. The main shop in our town has a car park. It is a car park designed as an afterthought on a postage stamp. On this day we had driven around it a couple of times to find a space. There were none. In the end we drove out and onto one of the nearby streets where I knew there was parking. We then walked back to the supermarket for a drink and to pick up some bits. On the way back to the car we spotted a police car driving around and then parking up in a space a few hundred metres away from where we were walking. At this point Joshua put his hand on my arm and whispered to me in a very serious voice, "Be sensible Daddy, be sensible." He made me laugh. I didn't know if he was talking to me or talking about himself. He's a quirky little boy. He may well be seven, but he must obviously be m...

It is important to remember in all circumstances that, Life must go on... The world never stops turning. It will not pause for you to gather yourself together and then choose to restart. The classic, you can never step in the same river twice. And so, this is the philosophical stance I am taking after receiving the following email this week; As a valued customer we wish to inform you that Pen Sense at King Street Nottingham will close on 10th February 2018 . We are retiring completely from the business, and wish to thank you for all your support over the years. My heart sank whilst reading the lines from beginning to end. It's the end. The finest shop in Nottingham, to close. I, the valued customer, left bereft by this news. But still, the world will turn. It will not think or care for my loss! Dark times.

It has been one of the toughest weeks of my life. the dawning realisation that I am now, truly, getting old and becoming decrepit has hit home, and it has caused a huge amount of soul searching. The way I have discovered this has broken my heart. It is not something I have ever thought possible, and it has buckled me at the knees. How does one confess such a thing in public? How does a man confess such a thing in public? Something that makes me so terribly sad when I think about it. My youth, lost behind me. Lost in a physical way. I can't eat raw pickled onions anymore. I took a cheese and onion sandwich to work a few weeks ago, and in the afternoon I found I had terrible stomach ache. I passed it off as a one off. I wasn't able to face the fear in the back of mind. I think I knew though. I just pushed it away. Then a couple of days ago I bought a normal jar of silverskin onions. As normal I took about 3 or 4 out and added them to my lunch plate. I couldn...

Spotify is a music streaming service. You can have access to as much music as your ears can cope with. What I learnt this year is that it provides a playlist of the 100 most played songs during the year. It has been quite an eye opener! The basic stat is that I use it a lot when I commuting to and from work.  Here are the basic statistics; I have listened to 23,488 minutes of music (16 consecutive days). 2477 different songs 580 different artists Pretty impressive I thought. I started listening to my top 100 songs when the problem was identified. That problem was allowing the children to pick songs when we were in the car. Joshua dominated the charts with his 'Ironman music'. This is basically any song in the top 100 that is performed by AC/DC. I don't mind AC/DC; I like them quite a lot. They have, in their day, made some cracking music. They also provided the music for the soundtrack to the film Ironman 2. Hence the 'Ironman songs' title. Theref...