I Want My Name To Mean Me.

I Thought Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything Was Remarkable. Managing To Be Entertaining While Still Delivering All That Hard Science Was A Pretty Good Trick To Pull Off.

... He Had Always Rather Liked Emergencies. Other People's At Any Rate. They Put Your Own Problems Into Perspective. It Was Like Being On A Ferry. You Didn't Have To Think About What You Had To Do Or Where You Had To Go For The Next Few Hours. It Was All Laid Out For You.

I Want My Name To Mean Me.

There Was A Time In My Life When I Was Going In And Out Of Houses That Were Extraordinarily Different - From A Working-class Terrace In Northampton To The Homes Of Friends Who Were Really Very Wealthy. It Was Quite An Odd Position To Be In, I Realise Looking Back, And Quite A Nice One.

There's Something Rather Wonderful About The Fact That Oxford Is A Very Small City That Contains Most Of The Cultural And Metropolitan Facilities You Could Want, In Terms Of Bookshops, Theatre, Cinema, Conversation. But It's Near Enough To London To Get Here In An Hour, And It's Near Enough To Huge Open Spaces Without Which I Would Go Insane.