Dear All Someone once said of their minister, that they thought his sermons were a bit like the ‘peace of God’ because they ‘passed all understanding’. I guess some sermons do pass all understanding and it can feel like eternity itself sitting and listening to a talking head. Incidentally, how many organ pipes, panes of glass and lampshades are there in Broom? Answers by e-mail, please! Tut, Tut. I have three basic rules for public speaking and over the years in many and varied places it’s always the same no matter the......

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Dear All In normal circumstances, we might expect to ‘bump’ into to folk we know while out shopping or enjoying a walk. We’d probably enjoy too good blether about nothing in particular and everything in general. We still can and do of course, but it’s not the same just now. The restrictions, a bit like a curfew, have put paid to that. My guess is, though, that we are getting a bit closer to ‘freedom’ and the worst, I think, is behind us hopefully Meeting people is generally part of our daily......

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Dear All I’ve just been listening to Amanda Holden on Breakfast TV speaking about her personal experiences and how much she and her family came to rely on the wonderful people who cared for them in the NHS. She spoke of them ‘holding their hands’ in their time of need. I thought what she said was really quite moving. After singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ she spoke about the loss of her first baby and of her sister who was seriously injured in a car accident. She shared this in explaining what......

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Dear All Have you ever bought something and then afterwards asked yourself ‘why on earth did I buy that’? I imagine that in every household kitchen cupboard, usually under the sink or thereabouts, there will be gadgets for slicing, cutting, and decorating food etc, that we thought would ‘come in handy’. The early versions of the slow cooker, the pressure cooker, sandwich toaster and other such ‘useful’ gadgets can still be found today and are gradually becoming tomorrow’s antiques. My first slow cooker incidentally took about a fortnight to do a casserole......

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Dear All Part of my new daily routine is to get up in the morning, usually, around 6.00 am, to begin writing my daily thoughts. It’s been, and is, an interesting and enjoyable exercise from my point of view and I happy to continue doing this for as long as is necessary. It might be that it will be something that I will continue to do beyond the current lockdown, as there are some of our people not able to get out, lockdown or not, and it’s a means of keeping in......

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Dear All This being Star Wars Day, ‘May the fourth be with you!’ Anyone having taken or are currently taking their Standard grade biology will be familiar with the lessons on the structures of animal and plant cells. The importance of the studies and discoveries of Gregor Mendel, the 19th-century scientist and Augustinian friar recognised as the first geneticist, will also be taught with his now-famous round and crinkly peas experiments. In the studies of biology, geology, geography, astronomy and with other sciences we encounter numerous and weighty questions that are not......

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Dear All If it were at all possible that a Roman soldier of some 2000 years ago could come back and visit us today in 2020 he would probably recognise many familiar things. He would recognise some of the language we still use today, possibly Hadrian’s Wall, and many other ruins and relics scattered around Britannia which in his time would have been in everyday use. The Roman Baths in Bath, Somerset are still very much used and visited and if he’d been there he’d have probably written about it using his......

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Dear All My old primary school uniform had a maroon blazer and the badge bore two faces, one happy and the other sad. You can see this ‘badge’ around theatres if you care to look for them. You’ll see them too on programmes and theatrical advertising hoardings etc. The faces represent tragedy and comedy. These past months have been quite dramatic, a real mixture of tragedy and comedy. It’s been interesting and quite amusing watching on TV what some folk get up to during their confinement. I’ve seen song and dance routines,......

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Dear All The familiar ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ were words we used to hear uttered by Magnus Magnusson, the ‘Viking Interrogator’, on Mastermind. Mastermind, the specialist TV quiz programme that could reduce grown men to tears or a quivering wreck in seconds. The only other chairs more intimidating than that ‘black one’ are the electric and dentist’s chairs. All of them designed to ‘inflict pain and suffering’. Well! it just looks that way. Getting started is easy but to keep going is much harder. Diets, learning to play a musical instrument......

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Dear All Yesterday in my ‘Thought for the day’ I referred to Samson as a ‘sunny boy’. Not that I was expecting anyone to pick up on the pun, but for your interest, the name Samson is derived from the Hebrew ‘Shimshon’ which means ‘sun’, hence ‘sunny boy’. If any of you did notice please do let me know. For today, however, I would like to leave ‘sunny boy’ alone and refer to a TV programme I happened to come across recently. It was a studio programme featuring many representatives of the......

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