Late start today. Apologies. The reason is I’ve been hunting for lost things. First, Jacqui with an appointment at 9.00 couldn’t find her bag. Hurried search: I eventually find it. Then as soon as Jacqui drives off, daughter Beth staying overnight with her two girls couldn’t find her car keys. To be fair, they had a reasonable excuse. Our house is still in some disarray as we gradually unpack following our house move last week. Boxes are shifted, piles are rearranged, some things are ditched. We still have no settled routine. However, that’s no consolation when you are late and you can’t find what you need to get there. And for me losing things is a spiritual test which I i

Cows are more dangerous than sharks. I already knew that, having been attacked 28 years ago by a cow while on a run through fields near our vicarage in Rochdale. Even today I bear the emotional scars. However, an excellent article on this morning’s BBC news website by science correspondent Pallab Ghosh seems to demonstrate this truth. He writes: “Seven people per year, on average, die from attacks by British cows. In comparison, on average, six people are killed in shark attacks per year globally.” That’s an amazing statistic, two in fact. Because the gist of his article is the creative use of statistics. It’s just a case of bringing the two together so that they can be compare

This week I am busy collecting stress points. In fact, today I have already collected at least 25 and it’s not even 9.00 am. The reason is that I find myself offline, involuntarily. My internet provider has prematurely disconnected our landline and broadband even though we do not move house until Monday. It’s going to be a challenge getting this blog out. In fact, moving house is often seen as one of the most stressful life events, not least because it is often linked with other major changes such as changing your job. But looking at the table in Wikipedia it represents just 20 points. That can’t be right! For your info, the highest score in this scale is the death of a spouse at

Ilsa: “You don't understand what you are involved in.” Ethan: “I don't understand what I'm involved in? “I don't understand what I'm involved in?! “What am I involved in?” IMF agent Ethan Hunt wasn’t the only person who had no idea. Neither did I. The storyline of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth and best film in this highly successful franchise, was simply too intellectually challenging for me. To quote the review in the Guardian. There are huge amounts of plot entanglements, disentanglements and re-entanglements here, but that is not the point. This is all about action and spectacle and viewed on an IMAX screen these certainly deliver.” I must say I love the gen

You may not have realised it yet – my apologies – but today is a Saturday. I say that because for the first time in about 20 years I failed to send my blog on the Friday. Just like when Big Ben failed to strike at 3.45 am on Thursday 5 August 1976. Such events can so easily disorientate us. One of my regular readers who travels a lot through his work asked me to continue sending my blog following my retirement. I was hoping he would say that he found my weekly digest inspirational or even just informative. But alas, no. Hs reason was that when he woke up in some hotel in a different time zone and my blog arrived, he then knew it must be a Friday! As it happens, my daughter o