The Final Curtain 💜 for Sir Tom Stoppard

30th Nov 202530th Nov 2025 Joey Jones2 Comments

Tributes are flooding in from the literary world and beyond for the celebrated playwright, screenwriter, and former journalist, Sir Tom Stoppard. ( 1937~2025)

Critically compared to William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, his writing for film, stage, radio, and television is legendary. Covering subjects including human rights, censorship, political freedom, and philosophical observations of human society.

Of him, Sir Lawrence Olivier once said –

” ….is a great glamouriser of thought”

About being a writer, Sir Tom said –

“You’re a writer. You write because you’re a writer. Even when you write about something, you have to think up something to write about just so you can keep writing”

Wow- imagine being a writer of that calibre!

You called?

29th Nov 202529th Nov 2025 Joey Jones3 Comments

What technology would you be better off without, why?

Okay, let’s get this out there- I’m still impressed with the landline. I mean, come on, who the flip thought that up? What I mean is how?

From what I can gather Alexander Graham Bell and his sidekick Watson get the credit, but it was Antonio Meucci, an Italian inventor who came up with the first telephone-like device, he couldn’t secure the patent in time, and Bell beat him to it in 1876. Nice!

Getting to today’s DP, its got to be the driverless car. Nah, don’t fancy that at all. By any stretch!

AI tells me….

‘Pilot programs for driverless taxi, private-hire, and bus services will launch in the UK. These will be the first opportunities for the public to book a ride in a self-driving vehicle via an app, though the rules for these early services are still being shaped.

Second half of 2027: This is the target for the full implementation of the UK’s Automated Vehicles Act, which could lead to a broader rollout of driverless vehicles on public roads.’ Yikes!!

So yes, landlines are pretty amazing in my simple mind, but so are 3D printers. 😯 How the…?

Hong Kong 💜

28th Nov 202528th Nov 2025 Joey Jones3 Comments

I cannot let another day pass without sending my sincere condolences out to the folk of Hong Kong. To the men, women, children, and animals who lost their lives so brutally in the fire-To the loved ones of the deceased and still missing, my heart goes out to you all.💜

A few words from Sara Teasdale

28th Nov 2025 Joey Jones3 Comments

What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

Hey WP, this is not the day to dig up hard decisions I have had to make in the past. And there have been so many! I feel quite bright n sunny today, with no wish to bring in dark clouds to spoil things.

Instead, what I will do, what decision I have made is to post another of my favourite poems ( again). No apologies for repeating There Will Come Soft Rains written in 1920.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

By Sara Teasdale 1884~1933

No turkeys were harmed in the making of this blog post

27th Nov 202529th Nov 2025 Joey Jones8 Comments

Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?

WP, are you asking us this as today is Thanksgiving, or simply a coincidence? I’m a Brit, so that’s not something we celebrate, but to my blogging buddies from across The Pond, have yourselves a happy day!

Word is that turkeys were introduced into England in the 1520s – purchased from American Indian traders, by William Strickland, an English landowner, navigator, and explorer. Much to the delight of King Henry VIII ( a glutton, by all accounts), who is reckoned to be the first monarch to eat it at Christmas. Goose would probably have been an option along with peacock prior to this.

Turkeys were considered a status symbol for a very long time. Only being available to those of considerable wealth or location.

In the 1720s it is recorded 250,000 turkeys were walked from Norfolk to London to meet the festive demand ( One would think that the birds would have lost a considerable amount of weight on their journey?)

As farming increased, it spread to the middle classes partly thanks to Charles Dickens writing about a dinner in A Christmas Carol. ( published in 1843)

Due to mass production and refrigeration, the general population could finally afford to push the boat out and buy turkeys like the elite had done for donkeys years. How disappointed they must have been to find out after all that time the meat would be quite dry…and they realised they preferred goose, beef or a humble chicken any day?

About Wabi Sabi

26th Nov 202526th Nov 2025 Joey JonesLeave a comment

https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2025/11/24/3-reasons-why-wabi-sabi-is-the-best-life-philosophy-by-a-psychologist/

Dream on

26th Nov 202526th Nov 2025 Joey Jones13 Comments

If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

In theory WP, this could be quite something, all those extra hours we could use to enrich our lives. But I need to cut this in the bud. Right here and now.

Patch can catch whiff of an empty window at fifty paces. He’d put in for another walk, straight off bat. Then there is the matter of having another meal to think about, shopped for, and prepared. I’m already exhausted at the prospect.

And anyways, having no sleep isn’t conducive to being a happy bunny, is it?

I dream vividly and enjoy the nightly escapades to another world. Sure, sometimes they can get a bit much, and it’s a relief to wake up, but others are as it says on the tin ‘ dreamy’.

If it’s all the same to you, WP, I will give this generous offer of yours to be awake 24/7 a wide berth.

It’s -2 outside at the moment, so I am going to turn off the light and snuggle on down for a while longer. Zzzzz

Two people and a gate

25th Nov 2025 Joey Jones7 Comments

Name your top three pet peeves.

You pull out onto a main. There is nothing behind you-and then there is. You can see them in your rear view mirror haring up the road, and they don’t slow down until they are right up your ..bumper. What’s that about?

You are walking down the street or in a supermarket, and there they are, holding a super-loud conversation, like they’re the only person in the world.

It’s late at night. You’re all warm and cosy in bed. There’s a storm brewing outside, but that’s okay. You’re toasty where you are. And then it happens, someone hasn’t secured a gate or a garden shed door, and it bangs, and you wait, and it bangs again, and again and again.