Archive for the ‘My life & thoughts’ Category
Visit to Malta (3): outside Valletta
October 11th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Saturday was another brilliant day weather-wise and equally successful from a sightseeing point of view. The whole day was occupied by a tour of locations outside Valletta with the same guide Audrey-Marie Bartolo using a minivan for the eight British tourists. First we drove to the town of Mosta (population 19,000) to see the Parish […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Visit to Malta (2): Valletta
October 10th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
On a Thursday afternoon, our flight from London Gatwick to Malta’s Luqa Airport on a British Airways Airbus A319 took 2 hours 50 minutes. We are staying at the Hotel Osborne which is conveniently located inside the oldest part of the capital Valletta. It was towards 10 pm when we reached the hotel but we […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Visit to Malta (1): introduction
October 9th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Since 2006, my sister Silvia (two years younger) and I have established an annual tradition of taking a short holiday together without our spouses. For our eighth such venture, we have chosen the island of Malta – somewhere neither of us has been before (for me, this is my 66th country). It is a short, […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Not the day I planned with my granddaughter Catrin, but still lots of fun
October 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Following an earlier exploratory visit to Legoland with my granddaughter Catrin, I wanted to take her again before the weather became too Autumnal. So I arranged with her parents that I would take her today. Vee said days ago that this would not work out because a period of rainy weather was forecast. In fact, […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Why I am WEIRD – and you probably are too
October 5th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
In the behavioural sciences, there is a group of people – who are usually the subject of most of the research in these disciplines – who are dubbed WEIRD. I guess I fall into this category and, when I spell out the acronym, you may conclude that you do too. In this context, WEIRD stands […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (3)
30 years in Sudbury Hill
October 5th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
When my parents split up, I was seven and I lived with my mother (and sister and brother) in one rented location after another. So, as an adult, I’ve hated moving. Today Vee and I celebrate living 30 years in the same house: a semi-detached place in a quiet crescent in Sudbury Hill in north-west […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Fancy travelling somewhere different? Want a bit of excitement? Here are 13 suggestions.
September 30th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
As you’ll see from this section of my web site, Vee and I like to travel to different countries and, over the years have been to some fascinating places. Not just nations like Egypt, India and China, but quite exotic locations like Uzbekistan, Iran, Syria and Guatemala. and Vee especially has done some fun things […]
Posted in Miscellaneous, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
More fun time with my granddaughter Catrin
September 25th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Earlier this week, the Labour Party held its annual conference in Manchester and both parents of my granddaughter Catrin were attending parts of the event, so we looked after her for a couple of nights and a couple of days. We had lots of fun together and, as always, she was so chatty and funny. […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Belgian break (4) : Brussels
September 4th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
On the last day of our Belgium break, we had to travel back from Antwerp to Brussels for the Eurostar and we decided to do so straight after breakfast so that we could see a little of Brussels and make the holiday a tale of three cities: Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels. I have been to […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Belgian break (3) : Ghent
September 3rd, 2014 by Roger Darlington
For our third day in Belgium, we made a trip from Antwerp to Ghent. As a schoolchild, Vee studied a poem by Robert Browning titled “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix” (actually this was a fictional incident and one never learns the nature of the good news). Little did she think […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (2)