In the mornings, I do exactly what my physiotherapist tells me to do. Warm up. Do some leg raises. Or are they hip hiker flexions? Can’t remember my muscular anatomy. Doesn’t matter either. It’s hard. It’s very hard to get things moving in the morning, any morning. And don’t under any circumstances ask why. Why is it so hard? Why am I doing it? Why does it matter? Does anything matter?  What is matter? That was the question, the only question, on the minds of my first employers. Read more [...]

How can one complain when the San Francisco sky is unaccountably blue? In fact, I noted this just a moment ago, staring idly out of the writer’s window, as one does. And as I learned under remarkably similar conditions in London 50 years ago, one must make hay while the sun literally shines. So, you can count on my emergence from this cloister out into the brighter meteorological world, forthwith. No question that it has a dampening effect, the summer fog. And the summer cold. My nephew from Read more [...]

I haven’t been eating. Honest. There are quite a few hours of the day when I’m hungry. So why, when I got on the scale this morning, have I put on one pound? Why? Things were supposed to be going in the opposite direction. They aren’t. And I have this goal: to fit into my suit before we hit the road at the end of August. The road leads to the Queen Mary, where there is a dress code involving suits. Actually, that code involves dark suits, as a minimum, several nights. Tuxedos being on prominent Read more [...]