Archive for the ‘My life & thoughts’ Category
What is it like to visit the famous Peruvian site of Machu Picchu?
May 15th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I really enjoy visiting new countries and have now managed to see a total of 73. Foreign travel is an opportunity to experience different cultures and visit wonderful locations. But I am aware that some popular tourist locations are now becoming overwhelmed. Today there is a story in the “Guardian” about opposition the building of […]
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50 years ago today, I joined the Labour Party
April 22nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I guess that I’m tribal in my politics: I’ve never missed an opportunity to vote, I’ve never voted anything other than Labour, and I now have half a century of continuous membership of the Labour Party. The Party has been through many travails in that time and indeed is going through great difficulties now with […]
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What are we going to do about the growing challenge of dementia?
April 14th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I have previously done a posting about my participation in a study looking at the health risks which might predict the onset of dementia. The study, conducted by Imperial College in London, is called CHARIOT PRO – a abbreviation for Cognitive Health in Ageing Register: Investigational, Observational, and Trial studies in dementia research: Prospective Readiness […]
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I’m on the move …
March 24th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Tomorrow I shall be moving home. This will be my first move in 35 years and will involve massive downsizing, so I have been decluttering substantially over many weeks. Currently I am surrounded by dozens of boxes trying to work out what will go where in the new place. The move will involve a change […]
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And how did you spend Valentine’s Day?
February 15th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I visited Manchester for the day with my new partner. We went to the People’s History Museum to join a special tour of the main galleries and hear about love stories through history – an event billed as “a perfect date for romantic radicals”. Mary Wollstonecraft strongly disagreed with the treatment of women within the institution […]
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For me, a new year means a new diary
January 1st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I have a near-lifelong practice of writing a diary and I have an entry for every day since I started. As 2018 ends and 2019 starts, I have now kept a diary for 57 years and the total number of daily entries now stands at 20,817. I find comfort in keeping a diary: I record […]
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Why it’s fun to be in one’s 60s or 70s in today’s Britain
December 29th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Since I was 70 this year, I’ve had to change the title of my light-hearted look at some of the advantages of being a pensioner in Britain. Check it out here.
Posted in British current affairs, History, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
“Listening at Christmas – and always” by Roger Darlington
December 24th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
A few years after I left my secondary school in Manchester, I was invited to help out with the school’s Christmas Fair and I decided to have a go at being Father Christmas. I had recently grown my first full beard and thought that I would enter into the role by rubbing flour into my […]
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Some more reading for Theresa May: how to make decisions
December 11th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Until yesterday afternoon, we had spent a couple of weeks expecting that today we would have “a meaningful vote” in the House of Commons on Theresa May’s Brexit deal. I did a blog posting on how I thought that things would work out on and after that vote. Instead the Prime Minister has decided to […]
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Seven of the many things I learned from Joshua (aged 11)
November 26th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
I spent last week in Oxford looking after 11 year old Joshua, the son of my close Chinese friends, while both his parents were in China on separate business trips. In the course of the week, Joshua and I had many discussions and I learned so much from this clever young man including the following: […]
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