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Ordinary Days
Ask most people about their life and they will tell you about the big days: weddings, births, the first job, the house move, the funerals. They are the days we photograph and come back to. But if you count them, there are not many. Most of a life is made of days nobody would think… Read more
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Opposite the Sunflowers
I sit on the bench opposite Sunflowers once a month, give or take. Usually on the way back from something in London. Train into Charing Cross, ten minutes in Room 43, train home. A small private detour. You get blocked, sitting on that bench. People walk up and stand in front of you and you… Read more
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This Is a ‘Good’ Friday
I visit my beach holiday home easter weekends to do maintenance tasks and to prepare for the summer with anticipation and a little hope. Hope for warm days and pleasant nights with family and friends. You may also know I have a little beach hut by the sea in a town called Lancing. It is… Read more
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Learn by Doing & Quantity Has Its Own Quality
I spend just 30 minutes a day on learning to draw and sketch. I am not looking for perfection, I am looking for gradual improvements. I am looking for learning from errors. In it’s own way quantity will have therefore it’s own quality. Let me illustrate with a story I found in a self help… Read more
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Apricity
As a lover of literature and collector of words. I would like to draw your attention to the word Apricity, which means the warmth of the sun in the winter. With 5 days of the winter left in the UK we get more of these warm(ish) days now. This term comes from the Latin meaning… Read more
action, advice, aphorism, Beach, beach huts, beaches, blog, Blue mind, books, carpe diem, choices, empathy, endeavour, experiences, failure, first lines, hard work, hardwork, heat, ideas, just do it, just keep swimming, knowledge, lancing, learning, lessons, life, life hack, mentoring, narrative, philosophy, quotes, Reading, Sea, seas, seaside, sharing, ships, Shoerham-by-sea, Shoreham-by-sea, storytelling, sussex, tenacity, water, waves, wisdom, wordpress, Writing -
Worry Often Gives a Small Thing a Big Shadow
Life is hard. My mother used to say often, “Nathan, no one promised you a rose garden” Everyone of us experiences difficulties that are hard to overcome. It was Buddha that said “Pain is certain, suffering is optional.” No matter what we’re going through it is better when we take ownership and accountability for making positive… Read more
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Putting Things Away, 2023 TGIM
This weekend was an important weekend in our home, it is the weekend we put the Christmas decorations away and begin to think of returning to work. As much I love putting up the decorations, I have learned to love when it ends. You have to, if you want to achieve anything in life. So… Read more
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❌✅❌❌🌧 🌧❌🌧❌✅✅✅✅✅
My HAMPSHIRE Hawks Cricket team charged to an astonishing six-wicket victory with 42 balls to spare over Glamorgan at the Ageas Bowl to qualify for the Vitality Blast quarter-finals. The Hawks started the day sitting in sixth place on the South Group table, needing to chase down fourth-placed Surrey’s run-rate to have any chance of… Read more
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Ask, Don’t Tell
Have you ever purchased anything in an elevator? Nope, me neither. Yet the business world loves the idea of the the elevator pitch. Don’t get me wrong knowing a plain, simple way to describe your business idea, Or what’s new in release 21r3 for instance is needed. But far more interesting to me is what… Read more
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Winding Down
To start to relax you first need to wind down. This first weekend of my week off was all about winding down and taking long walks with no where to go, no place to be and no expectations. Very relaxed. I am writing a post on Vincent Van Gogh and how to use his method… Read more
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Remembering Travel
I know the idea of travel seems like a distant memory but travel will return at some point in someway and this memory of a trip in the past has always stuck with me. It must have been 2008. I was staying on the 33rd floor of JW Marriot and I had an amazing view… Read more
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Bad Parenting: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Author’s note: I have for the last twenty years or more kept a daily notebook/journal and the things I hear and see I squirrel away for myself, the future or just because I must write something. Now I have kept this daily blog thing up for 150 days I put ‘some’ of the things up… Read more
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Tangibles and Intangibles
I am off to bed without knowing the result of the Superbowl but regardless of the result it will be a good day for Quarterback Tom Brady. Who must surely be seen as the greatest of all time now? It pains me to say it but well, you have to recognise greatness. Why I mention… Read more
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Learning From Puzzles
I love a puzzle, it can be a Rubik’s cube, a crossword puzzle, an escape room or just a jigsaw puzzle. When I say ‘just a puzzle’ I don’t mean it like that as my favourite thing to do down by the beach on a rainy afternoon is do a 1000 piece puzzle and listen… Read more
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Koi Carp on Cialis and the Secret Fax
It is funny how nostalgia can file off the rough the edges of the good old days. I often think back to when I was I used to work for a pharmaceutical company supporting commercial IT. I supported a bunch of different teams, all of them were nice people and occasionally you would see some… Read more
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A Quick Fun Way to Improve Your Memory
I had the pleasure over Chrimbo Limbo (if you don’t know what that is click the link), anyway I had the pleasure to read a cracking new novel. A Crime novel by Richard Osman called “The Thursday Murder club”. It is truly a charming and delightful cosy crime debut about four amateur sleuths in a… Read more
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Just One Book
My posts of late have had an air of self help about them. I want to mix things up a little in 2021. So today I was listening to the radio in the car and just caught someone asking a question, I never heard the answer, I switched channels and could not find my way… Read more
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2021: Don’t Be This Person
So you want to lose weight, get fit, see some gain physically in 2021. You have been a member of a gym but its too far away, OR the equipment is too old OR you don’t like the staff. You learn of a gym closer to work, its has new equipment and the people look… Read more
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2021: Just Ship It
New year resolutions are always so tedious, so self quickly and indulgently shared with the world on some platform or other, or in a facile conversation. If ‘The definition of insanity is repeating the same tasks over and over again expecting different results’ a new years resolution must be insanity on steroids. I don’t mean… Read more
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A Christmas Carol
If you read my post yesterday 98/100 Books read 2 to go you know I was reading Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I finished our Company Christmas zoom call, then closed up the home office. I made a cup of tea and sat in front of the fire. Charles Dickens could have had no idea it… Read more
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