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Tuesday, 31 December 2019

The end of the decade

A box of 1950s Christmas tree ornaments.
Someone asked me recently what my ambitions were for 2020. “To survive,”  I said. They thought it was  a joke. It wasn’t.

Someone in my business network (!) recently wrote a blog post on their achievements in 2019. It was all about developing their business and networking and lots of “travel” (ie foreign holidays). This is not my world.

Someone on Twitter started asking people about their achievements during the decade. I hadn’t even realised it was the end of a decade. Or that “achievements” were what mattered in life.

Wednesday, 4 December 2019

Book review: Face it by Debbie Harry



Book cover of "Face It".
“That’s very heavy” said the librarian as she scanned in my book. She was right. It looks like a normal hardback but it’s twice the weight. I still haven’t worked out why.

Appearances can be deceptive, as Debbie Harry knows. She was never “Blondie”, as the book makes clear: that was always a character. Debbie’s own character is harder to make out, even after reading this book. She has a lot of stories to tell but she tells them deadpan.