I first remember engaging with the world of ideas in 1971 in a very dull RAF station in Wales. Having drawn my regular service wages, after two years on engineering apprentice pocket money, I experienced the delights of getting drunk in the NAAFI bar or falling out of the first floor window of the camp … More A time to disengage
Rubí Donkey writes her Rubí Tuesday blog. Our Peasant has put a nice cooling fan in our stable. When he forgets to turn it on we have to go outside and bray at him. He is a bit slow to understand what the problem is. That’s a recognized trait in peasants. As long … More Of silly horses and unicorns
“Trump Trump outrage Trump Boris Brexit Trump climate panic Trump Brexit Trump Boris Boris climate panic Brexit panic Boris Trump.” “Trump outrage Boris Brexit climate panic.” “Climate panic will be coming in from the south, but followed by normal weather on Tuesday afternoon before further spells of climate panic on Wednesday.” 2019 season of BBC … More Good news?
Dear Sra. Martínez-Alberola,* I am a British resident with my own rural property living in Comunidad Valenciana. I retired after teaching Geography here in Spain for ten years. I am a committed European and part of the British resistance to the Brexit project. Although I am connected with Eurocitizens here in Spain and have done … More Lobby the EU now
I am very curious to know why do donkeys burrow their heads deep down in straw when eating? I delivered this morning’s feed to the indoor stable manger because I thought it was about to rain. In fact the heavy dark clouds dispersed half an hour later. Once again I observed the donkeys very quickly … More Straw burrowing
The question arose in the early hours of this Monday morning after a dream in which my UK state pension had sunk to half its value. These days, it is difficult to determine what is worth worrying about and what is not. I watched the spectacular end of the Tour de France yesterday after three … More Is the UK a failed state?
I left social media and now I’ve abandoned newspaper comment threads. Here’s why. I was quite active on Twitter about ten years ago, then eventually gave it up. This was partly because it bored me but also because the people in my own group – mostly Catholics of the more conservative kind – had morphed … More Life on the beach
Rubí Donkey writes her Rubí Tuesday blog. Our Peasant is having a bad day. He spent a short time looking at his computer this morning then a long time swearing while sweeping up donkey manure before putting the shopping bags in the long-suffering Hyundai and swearing his way down the road to go … More The quality of straw
El Parral is in a pine wooded valley under the Aitana ridge in the Costa Blanca. It was on Saturday 18 June 2016 – starting at 6 a.m. – that we walked the donkeys from the old field I had rented for six years in the valley below Finestrat to their new home here in … More El Parralel universe
In 1961 President Kennedy used the following ‘quote’ in a speech : “As the great parliamentarian Edmund Burke said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’” The problem that Burke never actually said it does not prevent us regarding it as one of the great non-quotations of … More The US president is a fascist
