Archive for the ‘My life & thoughts’ Category
Do you know what your name means?
February 3rd, 2009 by Roger Darlington
My first name Roger was brought to England by the Normans – it comes from two Germanic words ‘hrod’ and ‘gar’ meaning respectively ‘fame’ and ‘spear’. My family name Darlington came originally from the English place name ‘Deornothingtun’ in the north-east of England. Working backwards, ‘tun’ (our ‘ton’) is found in hundreds of English place […]
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Snow blankets Britain
February 2nd, 2009 by Roger Darlington
Readers of NightHawk in Britain don’t need telling this but my many readers outside the UK might be interested to know that we are experiencing our heaviest snow in 18 years. The last time that we had so much of the white stuff was 7-9 February 1991 – that’s before we had the Web and […]
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After four decades …
January 30th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
Last night, in a central London restaurant, I attended a small reunion of some of the people I studied with at university in the late 1960s. We were all in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (now part of the Manchester Business School). It was slightly […]
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My dear friend Joshua
January 25th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
This week, I attended the Oxford Media Convention as I do each year. Since I live in London and the convention had an early start, I stayed the previous night in Oxford which gave me the opportunity to visit my special Chinese friends Hua and Zhihao. They have an adorable boy of a year and […]
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Words of wisdom
January 3rd, 2009 by Roger Darlington
I’ve finished my first book of 2009. It was a Christmas gift from my sister who is a counsellor and it only took three sittings. It’s called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart” and is written by the American psychiatrist Gordon Livingston. You can read my review here. Like so many self help books, what […]
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How to make decisions
December 29th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Shortly before Christmas, a conversation with a friend turned to discussion of how people do or should make decisions. This got me thinking and, over Christmas, I’ve drafted a new section for my web site on “How To Make Decisions”. This is the 26th section of my web site concerned with various life skills and […]
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A family Christmas
December 27th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Vee and I have now returned from Felpham on the south coast where we spent Christmas at the home of Vee’s twin sister Mari and her husband Derek. Also with us was their eldest son Martin with his wife Isobel plus their daughter Yasmin (three in a couple of days time) and Lucas (seven months). […]
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What were the final words of King George V?
December 25th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
In early 1936, Britain’s King George V, who triumphantly celebrated his Silver Jubilee only months earlier, lay in his bed at Sandringham House on the verge of death, surrounded by his family. Concerned with keeping his royal patient’s spirits up, the King’s physician reportedly suggested, “Your Majesty will soon be well enough to visit Bognor.” […]
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I have a theory …
December 24th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Now all generalisations are dangerous (even this one), but I have a theory that, generally speaking, the higher up the social scale, the slower people speak and the worse they write. The Christmas cards that I’ve received in the last couple of weeks provide strong evidence for the writing part of my thesis.
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The art of the Christmas letter
December 24th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Some people are somewhat cynical about the idea of a Christmas letter, but I’ve sent out one each year since 1979 [see this year’s letter here] since we have so many friends around the UK and throughout the world that we are in touch with much less often than we would like and they appear […]
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