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Four Funerals and a Wedding
We spent the weekend in London, where one of my cousins on my late mother’s side of the family was getting married. Over the past five years the family has suffered a number of bereavements, as my parents’ generation has gradually grown o...
Sergio
Early this evening we went to the ever-excellent Goethe Institute to watch a screening of ‘Sergio‘ to celebrate World Humanitarian Day. The 2009 documentary film is based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power’s biography, Sergio:...
Back to school
Back to work this morning (well, all right, I admit it; I came in over the weekend to clear my desk) and it felt, in all honesty, like getting into a modern, efficient car; the machinery is there, and it works well. Colleagues were rested and refresh...
Of climate change and its consequences
A full-page analysis of climate change issues in today’s Financial Times, ‘Lingering Clouds’, caught my eye. ‘Consensus on dangers,’ says the sub-title, ‘but scientists face a hard task in accounting for margins of...
Ha-Joon Chang’s take on capitalism
I love a good counter-intuitive thesis. The Sunday newspapers today carry reviews of a book entitled 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang that is definitely on my reading list. Ha-Joon Chang is a c...
Bowie and Strand
I have had two occasional companions this summer, one musical and one poetical. The musical companion, a birthday present (thank you ED) was a double-disc recording of David Bowie’s 2003-4 Reality Tour. The album, of thirty songs, was recorded...
Monte Bregagno
We got up at dawn this morning and walked and scrambled up to the summit of Monte Bregagno (2,107 metres). This was an altogether stiffer proposition than last Monday’s Monte Berlinghera. There is no reliable map, there are plenty of well-used...
Myths of Light
Next on my summer reading list was Joseph Campbell‘s Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal (I am warmly grateful to Andreas for the present). This is a rich feast of a book. Campbell (1904-1987), a professor of comparative mythology,...
Navigating Complexity
I try to read at least one work-related book every summer. Last year it was the disappointing Struck by Lightning and the slightly more satisfying and substantive Tipping Point. This year I have just finished reading Arthur Battram’s Navigat...
Chessex’s Testament
Summer reading again. This time something much heavier, if shorter. Jacques Chessex won the Prix Goncourt in 1973 and was considered one of Switzerland’s greatest authors. He was variously a novelist, poet, essayist and won the French Litera...
To the mountain top!
Impatient with the continued poor weather, we got up early and scrambled up to the top of Monte Berlinghera before the bad weather could close in again. It’s not the biggest of mountains and certainly not the tallest (+/- 1,950 metres) but it h...
The Birds
Yesterday evening we watched Hitchcock’s The Birds, an intriguing work of art. I wanted to know more, particularly about the abrupt ending, so I surfed on the internet and came across a wonderful monograph, ‘The Day of the Claw: A Synopti...
May Week Was in June
Summer reading again. Last summer I got through the first two volumes of Clive James’s ‘Unreliable Memoirs’. I have just finished the third volume, May Week Was in June, covering his period at Cambridge University. In the preface he...
Forte Montecchio
Today being grey and overcast, we visited two historic, strategically located defensive points at the northern end of the Lago di Como. The first, il Forte di Fuentes, was built in 1603 by a Milan-based Spanish Duke and mostly destroyed in 1796 by Na...
Of collapsing ceilings…
Like our counterparts in the other EU institutions, no doubt, Gerhard Stahl, SG of the Committee of the Regions, and I did a quick remote check on our e-mails this morning to make sure that all was well, only to discover this was decidedly not the...
True Tales of American Life
Summer reading time again. First down is True Tales of American Life, edited and introduced by Paul Auster (with grateful thanks to Paul C for the gift). I am a great fan of Auster’s fiction though, as readers of this blog will know, I think he has...
Inception
In the evening we at last got to see Christopher Nolan’s Inception, our summer treat. This is a tour de force, up there with Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Di Caprio is brilliant. His forte is clearly the tormented individual but he is goi...
Renewal task force
This afternoon I chaired my last big meeting before the summer break. The European Economic and Social Committee’s members are elected for a mandate (previously of four years, from now on, under the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions, of five yea...
Washed air
All asthma and allergy sufferers will know what I am talking about. It has been a tough old year. In addition, there have been several peaks in atmospheric pollution in Brussels during the hotter weather. When we have not wanted to scratch out our it...
Castle in the Sky
I had promised to take the family to see Inception in the evening (see next post). But by the time we got to the cinema there were no places left. So the sprogs were left to choose a mutually agreed DVD. Their choice, exceptionally, was a Japanese a...
