Flights of the butterfly

  • The Rules of the Railway

    Once upon a time, a very long time ago when I was a little boy, I had an electric train set. My Dad built it and it was beautiful. It had scenery and a tunnel. I hope my Dad knows now that I appreciate all the effort he went to. But there were problems. The…

  • Menopause

    I’m sick of hearing about The Menopause. It’s just such a depressing word. It completely misses the point. “Pause” is what you do to draw breath before you start off again. This isn’t a pause. It’s The End of Being a Baby Making Machine. I know it comes from classical Greek, “men” from “month” and…

  • What is a Woman?

    Defining what constitutes a Woman is a very popular pastime these days among the Wookies. Men should be extremely careful about asking this question of a Woman. Frequently, the next remark will be, “Please can I have my balls back.” If you ask a tigress how she defines herself, she may elect to give you…

  • The Bicycle in my Tree

    This is not the worst cycling accident in the world: I saw this picture of a bicycle in a sycamore tree some three years after losing someone precious to me. Something about it made me save the news cutting. It seems in 1914, a lad propped his bike against a tree, went off to war…

  • Life, and the other thing

    Some people seem to want to spend their lives defying death, cheating death, delaying death. In fact, a lot of them end up not-dying rather than living. If you live like that, what a waste of time and effort. If you play your life against death, you will lose. He only has to score once,…

  • Cigarettes and Fatties

    OK, you Wokies. Time to wake up and be Woooke in a useful way. The UK Government has announced it will be putting cigarette cards into packs of cigarettes with information to discourage smokers and advise on ways to kick the habit. This is getting perilously close to an infringement of my human right to…

  • Perfume

    Why do women, and in an increasing number of men, persist in rolling in what I assume is a mixture of lavatory cleaner and tear gas and then stomp along the streets trailing a toxic cloud of fumes, marked by the dead and dying insect life? Do they not understand that they are doing their…