6 pm pyjamas

The title of this blog post is from Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew.  It is not meant as a 'woe is me', hand wringing comment but is stated as a simple fact that I have been wrangling with and am now proactively addressing.  Chatting to friends, I have noticed that many of us are actively pursuing life changes, both personally and professionally.  Two of my friends are moving to live by the sea, not because they are anywhere near retirement but because they want a better life, a slower life and one that affords some of the pleasures of retirement which my generation and those to come can probably only dream of as we work longer for less and have no pension to speak of when we finally get there.  Several others are choosing to focus precious time on their families and spend less time working, although that choice in itself clearly impacts on earning potential.  Although I am sure that there are many men out there who face similar tricky decisions around wha...

Films, possibly even more than music but probably not more than books, are very, very important to me.  Now, call me a sentimental old fool (not all at once though, my self esteem is shaky as it is) but there is something wonderful about sharing much loved films with children.  Mine have been introduced to the delights of Laurel and Hardy and Fred Astaire before they were conditioned to need to see everything amid a technicolour glow of fast moving action and talking animals. Thankfully, at seven and four years of age, they are just as happy to watch a Studio Ghibli animation as a Disney Pixar or Dreamworks offering and were only momentarily nonplussed at Tim Burton's black and white Frankenweenie before being wrapped in his world, forgetting how it looked because they were too busy being enraptured by how they felt.  For me, the miracle of being transported to another world is always thrilling and nothing matches the excitement of the lights going down and the ...