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There is a poignant beauty to this display of red poppies - especially against the grey Yorkshire sky and dark stone. It is to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the…

First flowers of the year. Spring crocus popping up from my newly laid Cotswold gravel.

Time is flying by at the moment. Not much time for photography or even writing. But, the exciting news is that traffic at Tejvan.co.uk has doubled from 20 people a day to 40 page views per day on account of ranking for “Shakespeare Jokes.” (more…)

When I went to Oxford University, I remember a professor handing back an essay with a mark B+. He added the comment – “Very good, but it would have been an A – if you had given even the briefest attention to correct grammar and spelling”. I remember being very happy to get a B+ from Oxford. That was good enough for me!

Since, almost by accident, I have become a ‘professional blogger’ / ‘professional writer’, I am endeavouring to improve this aspect of writing, and over the years have learnt to enjoy this aspect of writing more. (1)

I did intend to write an article here, but it made more sense to share at my Cycling Blog, for my long-suffering cycling readers.

This is the article from Cycling Uphill.

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Last year (2016), I spent a lot of time reading the news.  I also felt I was wasting my time – just getting frustrated with things out of my control. In Greece, I took a break from news, and surprised myself that I kicked the habit almost completely. In summary, the news embargo gave a feeling of great joy and freedom – and perhaps it was a little easier to meditate too. I wrote an article at Write Spirit about spending less time online.

Back in Britain, I have somewhat slipped from the purity of this ‘ignorance is bliss‘ motto, and always seem to come across the days headlines. Although I have a general knowledge of what’s going on, I do tend to stay well clear of online news, with its capacity to suck you in. Occasionally, I have taken a weekly print newspaper which gives a summary of last week’s news. One thing I noticed about taking a break from the news – is that afterwards – you feel you have less appetite for it. When staying with my parents, I just couldn’t eat a meal and have the six ‘o clock news on at the same time – it gives me ingestion. To be fair, after an unorthodox life of meditation, vegetarianism, intense cycling and alcohol abstention – they took my ‘dislike of news whilst eating’ in their stride. (more…)

I spent Christmas partly thinking about the long journey from Oxford to a resort in Greece. Over 15 hours of traveling gives many possibilities of things to go wrong. But,…

In the past few weeks, I have been ill and often house bound. I’ve spent a bit of time looking through selected art books at those artists who inspire me. My range of appreciation is relatively narrow. At least after the start of the Twentieth Century, it becomes (according to my taste) harder to find art with real soul.

Nevertheless, it gave me the inspiration to try my hand at painting. It is not false modesty to say this is one subject where I have no talent or even what you might call capacity. The only thing I remember from art class, is the ability to draw a straight line without a ruler. I’ve learnt this only takes you so far, if you aspire to be an artist.

Lacking any technical capacity or artistic inspiration, I started off with basic imitation. It would be a fair assessment to say my Mona Lisa looked more like Edvard Munch’s the Scream, than an illuminating creation. (more…)

Today was Burrington Combe hill climb. It is a two mile hill climb, averaging 6%. I first rode the race back in 2004 – it was one of my first cycle races. I like this photo taken by Dave Johnson. (more…)

I didn’t make any New Year resolutions. Very bad.

So I will make a belated resolution. To spend less time reading rubbish on the internet. I wrote an article here: managing life with internet.

As an economist, I often read articles on economics at papers like the Guardian and Independent. In one sense they are free, but the cost is that your eyes often get drawn to reading the useless comments at the bottom of the articles. In the old days, these comments were more carefully thought about, selected and the best published as letters to the editor. – And I rarely read letters to the editor, because they weren’t very good anyway.  So why have I spent time reading things that only give a mild sense of frustration?

I like this page – don’t read the comments. Three of my favourites.

“The problem with internet comments is that you can never really know who’s saying them.”

— Winston Churchill

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