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What were you doing when you were 10?

What were you doing when you were 10? My ten year-old grandson, Marcus James Dowding, will always remember what he was doing - amid e-schooling from Latymer Prep in Chiswick, London -  he was penning this poem.  2020 In 2020, the outbreak begun, some countries had cases, while others had none. They told us all to shut away, and shut away quick, we had to stay two metres apart or we might get sick. While people protested around the world saying “Oh for goodness sake!”, the world leaders of 2020 tried to control the outbreak. I’m sitting here alone at home, not playing with my friends, this is where my story starts, or is it where it ends? Staring at a screen, and learning school from home, when Mum calls me down to unload the dishwasher, I start to moan and groan. But I spend more time with my family, I guess that’s a plus, and I don’t have to go to school in the morning, not cramped on the bus. Making pasta with my Dad, playing footbal...
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9/11 every 24 hours - really?

A new US government report projects 3,000 deaths per day from COVID ( NY TIMES.) Inspired by our Dear Leader, I thought I should explore options for a COVID 19 test, should I ever need one. This week, I began my quest with my local pharmacy... Hi, I'm a regular customer and I have Medicare insurance. Are you providing a test for COVID 19? No. If I wanted a test, where would I go? You should call your local health clinic. Hi, local Health Clinic. Can you test me for COVID19? No. What should I do if I need a test? You should call the COVID HOTLINE. Hi, COVID HOTLINE: Can you test me for COVID 19? Are you showing symptoms? Not as far as I know. But you can have it and not know. Well, you gotta fill in a form to see if you meet the criteria. I'm over 70. That's not one of the criteria. Really? No. It just means you're more vulnerable. A-ha. But it's not a criterion for testing? It's not one of the criteria. Look: I know you're very busy and I don't want to t...
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What might lurk beneath 'Americanism'?

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There's a powerful quotation that's usually attributed to the American  novelist  and Nobel prize-winner, Sinclair Lewis. Unfortunately, the Sinclair Lewis Society can't find the sentence anywhere in his works. The quotation runs ' when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross .'  Thousands of liberals  think that Lewis, the author of 'Main Street' and 'Babbit',  said it or - tribune of the  working  man that he was - should have said it. Does it matter? More to the point, I submit, is another  statement   that Yale Professor HE Lubbock did make, way back in 1938, when European fascism was on the rise. The Yale man believed that: "When and if fascism comes to America it will not be marked 'made in Germany' it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called Fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism.'” When I watched POTUS on TV walk across the stage at a recent m...
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So: why are so many people starting their sentences with 'so'?

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The  NY TIMES  ran an article last week stating that it's a bad thing to 'rant'. Rather like the advice 'don't gossip', the stricture is well-meaning but it can make for a bloody boring time. If you disagree, stop reading now. Because this blog post is a subdued rant on half-a-dozen unrelated topics. 'So'  is one of those 'think' words that went verbally viral about eighteen months ago. The word joins the 'you knows' and 'um's' and the dreaded 'likes' that live like unwanted acne in the dialogue of anyone over the age of 5 and under the age of 60. I first noticed the arrival of 'so' when a CBS anchorwoman asked an ex-CIA guy named, I think, Mike Morrell, a series of questions about ISIS. Every one of his answers began with the world  'so' , as in ' so:  I think they are re-grouping in the north.' What I noticed about his answers, aside from the 'so', was that the word seemed...
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‘Peggy’s story.’

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‘Peggy’s story’ My friends, and even some readers who know me less well but who may dip into this blog from time to time, might have heard that I was born in Shanghai.  Memories of China came unbidden this week when the Amagansett book club suggested that we read Ishiguro’s 2000 novel ‘When we were orphans.’ The story strides confidently for the first one hundred pages, then flags, and limps home unsatisfactorily at page three hundred and thirty-six.  That’s only  my  opinion about the story but as a wise friend of mine says – after he’s pronounced on some topic or other – ‘what do I know?’ In the matter of this novel, even Ishiguro himself admits ‘it is not my best book.’  No, ‘Ishi’, the work doesn’t come close to the qualities of ‘Remains of the day’ or “Never let me go.’ Both superb novels, they were adapted into fine films (the latter giving us stellar debuts from Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan.) As I romped through the first hour of reading ‘Orphans’, ...
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Who knows you the way you were?

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'Who knows you the way you were?’ Jung said that as we grow older we become more of who we are, we  individuate.  Obama told Trump that the presidency wouldn't change him; it would just magnify who he was. Well... yes. Why Cape Town? Every year, I try to spend some months in Cape Town, the city where I grew up, because it allows me to be  who I was.  My friends here - whose adult children (now in their 40s) I've known since they were small - all know me  as I was.  I'm comfortable with that; I think that's the joy of going ‘back home.’  In February, I had lunch at Kelvin Grove country club, under the shadow of Devil"s Peak, with five prep school chums. The first time I met these men we were boys, nine or ten years old, innocent lads entering Western Province Preparatory School. We have some history.  I've found that the first time you meet someone you haven't seen for a very long while, your inner...
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