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The most ancient of all my memories, accumulated over nearly 90 years, is one of annoyance. “What a stupid name – why didn’t they call it something I could pronounce?” I refer to the advent of my younger sister Barbara when I was about two and a half years old. My mother was sitting on a short-legged, cane-seated chair known as “the nursing chair”, feeding the new arrival and trying to get me to pronounce its name. I was not quite aware of what it was, although it appeared to be alive and ...

To get things into perspective, if one could catch a space rocket and travel from one side of the known universe to the other, travelling at 300,000 kilometres a second, the journey would take 156 thousand million years. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a mere speck of dust in this vastness, our solar system a tiny dot in the galaxy. The entire human existence is a nothing; a mere blip in the passage of biological time which began on earth about 3,800 million years ago. Where it came from is unknown. ...

I was called up for military service in 1942, shortly after my 18th birthday. Many of my school friends likewise went into the forces.

I didn't particularly want to go having only just started work and wanting to get on with my career. Having been given the option I asked for the navy and naturally was directed to an infantry regiment and during training found it quite an exciting (boring at times) life. I enjoyed unarmed-combat sessions (makes judo seem very ladylike) and the ...

Religion may be described as a faith-based credence in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe. The single difference between religion and astrology (or tarot divination etc) is that religion has been institutionalised and, as such, has been greatly influential on most societies and still retains its hold in many. The evidential base for sectarian religious belief systems is little different from that for astral influences or the effectiveness of divination which carried ...

No one escapes depression. A great many people get depressed, however briefly, at some time in their lives. You may never get depressed, but some of the people close to you will. One person in five will suffer clinical depression requiring medical or other intervention.

The experience of depression can be the very worst experience you have ever had. It can also be the source of acquiring wisdom. Nowadays people often talk about “getting depressed” when what they are talking about ...