5 Tips to Keeping New Year’s Resolutions
Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Have you tried in the past and succeeded? Or failed? Given up? Or even forgotten what they were? Here are my 5 tips to keeping New Year’s resolutions. And…
How to be confident
How do you gain confidence? From time to time, I answer readers’ questions in my blog. Today’s question comes from Australian author Anne Howell, whose memoir All That I Forgot came out last year. It’s…
How I managed to overcome overwhelm: The joy of lists
Things to do? Books to write, movies to watch, people to see, bills to pay, meetings to arrange, trains to catch, deadlines to meet… argh! One of the most challenging tasks in today’s world is…
Unique chance: Verbal Aikido Sept 1
Subscribers with a good memory will remember I’ve twice featured the inimitable Luke Archer, creator of Verbal Aikido. Well, the good news is that I’ve managed to persuade him to provide a very rare class…
How to deal with a verbal attacker – Verbal Aikido
Do you ever find yourself lost for words? Or outmanoeuvred by a verbal attacker? Perhaps someone gets the better of you and you’re not even sure how they did it. You need the marvellous Luke…
How to tell when you’re being lied to in cyberspace
Lies are big news at the moment. Lies by politicians, lies by social media bots, lies by journalists… Most of the focus is on stopping the lies – less about helping us see the truth.…
How to get stuff done this autumn
Holidays are over and the photos are almost all that remain (aside from maybe some extra weight around the middle). The days are drawing in, at least in the northern hemisphere, and people are getting…
What makes good writing great?
What sorts the Austens from the Dan Browns? The Truffauts from the Ed Woods? It’s not using clever words. It’s not making a political statement. It’s not even necessarily creating a dazzling plot. This is…
Till the trumpets crack – going beyond
In the second movement of Beethoven’s masterful symphony the ‘Eroica’ the music takes the form of a funeral march, building to a dramatic climax where the two trumpets have to play an almost impossible phrase.…
Do you need your delusions?
Listeners who believe that the BBC is a hot-bed of pinko leftie elitists who want nothing more than to attack the right, might have felt vindicated if they’d turned on Radio 4 last November. At…
What can we learn from the murder capital of Europe?
Just this week I heard from my neighbourhood network about yet another death from stabbing, close by in Islington. Knife crime in London reached an all-time high last year and 2019 seems to be going…
The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard E Cytowic
It began in a kitchen. Two men talking over a roast chicken. But one off-beat comment would lead to a decades-long scientific detective story. And a new view of what it means to be human.…
Keeping a New Year’s resolution in 9 easy steps
We all make them, but how many of last year’s resolutions are you still keeping today? Any? Here are nine tricks that I use to make keeping a New Year’s resolution much, much easier. 1.…
My UnChristmas Message
For the next two weeks, the Christmas religion of consumerism tells us everyone is supposed to achieve peak happiness. If we don’t, there’s surely something wrong with us. Time, perhaps, for an UnChristmas message instead……
Taking risks in the farmers’ market
How often do you find yourself taking risks? Recently, my wife and I visited a farmers’ market along with our younger son and his family. I don’t know about you, but I find these places…
6 (easy) ways to overcome procrastination
Do you want to overcome procrastination? We’re all good at putting things off. Of course, if we were that good at procrastination, you’d think we’d simply put off doing it. But somehow it doesn’t seem…
What was I when the cat needed letting in?
Before the cat needed letting in the front door, I was about to write about the fun of visiting good bookshops and literary festivals. Especially as my local bookshop – West End Lane Books –…
Don’t trust Jed Mercurio – he’s a crime writer
Have you been watching Jed Mercurio’s latest series, Bodyguard? Do you trust him? A review in a paper this week said, not to worry: the bodyguard himself is the star role and the star always…