How to butter toast

Sunday 3.38pm

1. To get the butter on to the knife, hold it at right angles to the butter and scrape across. The butter will rise up in a beautiful curl.

2. To transfer the butter onto your toast, place the knife almost flat against the toast, with the top edge slightly more raised than the cutting edge. Now press gently and slide the knife across. The butter will spread itself onto the toast. If your toast is still warm you can now wait a few seconds for the butter to soften before spreading again. This method works for bread as well of course, even the softest.


If there is one guiding theme in my life it is the constant search for simplicity. In work, in leisure, in deeds, words and actions. The best, the most elegant solution to any problem is usually the simplest.




Watching my eldest son struggling to butter some bread, using the point of the knife (and moaning vociferously about the bread tearing) led me to look at how I did it.

Me and the Ducks

Saturday 2.48pm

It was lunchtime on one of those still, grey days. Just me, the ducks, and the park. There I was sitting eating my cheese sandwich, just idly thinking, feeling a bit down. "Wouldn't it be great" I thought "if I didn't have to go back to work this afternoon, If I could just sit here all afternoon like the ducks." But of course one day I will be able to, because I have thought this way in the past and things inevitably change. I sat thinking of the past for a while, the places I had been, the things I had done since - there has certainly been change, and for the better as well.
And a thought rose up through it all. When I do look back one day, what would I like to be looking back upon? Myself feeling miserable? or the experiences I had on my way there?

Obvious really.

Caught Between Heaven and Earth

Sunday 9.49am

Six thirty in the morning and I am outside in my pyjamas. The grass is sodden, chilling my feet as they sink in and the air has that wet coldness that goes straight to your bones, bypassing any flesh. It has been raining for a day and a night but has stopped now. All is still apart the dripping of the trees. Looking across, far, far to my right is the distant brightness of dawn. Above me the towering clouds still boil and churn with the last of the rain, whilst below me I can feel the earth, vast, solid, supporting. Caught as I am, pinioned between these two great forces I should not be able to move - and yet I can, sliding down and sideways into my morning exercise. Tai chi.

Finished, I stand again, just a few minutes later and in a different place. And there has been a change. I look to the distant dawn again, expectantly this time for that is where I am headed. No matter how black things look or what is against me, I can use that to move away to where I want to be.

The first step is to see.





Life is never dull when you have a vision.