It was an extraordinary thing to be at all four BBC Prom concerts this opening September weekend of 2025 — from Friday through to Sunday evening — first to stand in London’s Royal Albert Hall with Jutta, immersed in sound on a truly monumental scale, and then to listen to those same concerts again later … Read more …
Now back home after a cycle tour of Central Europe and an exploration of Hungarian learning that didn’t exactly unfold as planned – see previous posts – I’m looking forward in the coming months to going deeper into the other AI (as in Artificial Intelligence cf ai-EMDR, attachment-informed), and have again been blown away by … Read more …
Indeed, why on earth (in devil’s name, which is closer to the Hungarian above) am I – and have been for so long – learning Hungarian? Sitting in Budapest half way through a three-week (almost) sojourn in Hungary in the early summer of 2025 with the specific intention of getting to grips with this intense, … Read more …
I probably don’t need to write this follow-up to my blog of March this year on being diagnosed, at 70, at last and rather late in life, with Aspergers aka High-Functioning Autism. Indeed, just thinking about starting this piece reminds me just how difficult I’ve always found writing to be, whether agonising over a poem or short … Read more …
I’m not quite sure how this post will unfold, other than to know that a) like my despatches from Beijing or the Cold War’s diplomatic frontline it will probably be too long, and that b) some old BBC friends and colleagues may already be sighing, “Oh dear, there he goes again.” Prompted by Fergal Keane … Read more …