Month: <span>November 2020</span>

Violon d’Ingres

March 19, 2024 No Comments

30 November 2020 Main image by Philippe Lucchese When I was a teenager, I remember pretty much the precise moment I learned the real definition of the word “amateur”. It was while watching some or other rugby tournament on the telly. I actually enjoyed watching rugby. It interested me, and I later played for Nottingham […]

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Categories

March 19, 2024 3 Comments

Main picture by Henry Be on Unsplash 23 November 2020 The notion of categories has come up for me a few times these past days and weeks. Categories and rating scales. I am far from being an expert in measurement but I have designed myriad surveys in my professional decades, and even contributed to psychometric […]

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I nearly said “Micky”

March 19, 2024 1 Comment

Main photo a “selfie” with a traditional camera, Easter 1988, our first weekend away, in Cornwall, some 6 months after the start of our relationship. 14 November 2020 To want to have sex, love-making, and intimacy (deep intimacy) in my life again was not a difficult decision for me to make when Mike was no […]

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What I Wouldn’t Give…

March 19, 2024 1 Comment

10 November 2020 Painting by Julia – one of her last pieces, December 2018 Today is one of those days where Julia’s death, the reality of it, gets through to me… just a little bit more. Despite it always being present, always heavy in my heart, wearisome in my lungs, ponderous on my shoulders, tense […]

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On Love and Risk

March 19, 2024 No Comments

7 November 2020 Remember when, back in the 1980s, just as we were getting sexually active (if you’re my age), and AIDS hit….? There were all those adverts, in the UK at least, on billboards, in the press, perhaps even on TV – (no social media back then), of a gorgeous young woman or man…. […]

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Resilience Is…

March 19, 2024 3 Comments

1 November 2020 I could have gone a few different directions for this week’s writing. One was going to be about some death admin that was, in the end, straightforward and easy, if also hard. I might yet write about that, just because I do so love challenging my embedded belief that all admin (death […]

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