MEMORIES never fade of taking the terrifying walk over the divide that once existed between East and West Germany . Trigger-ready guards at your back; trigger-ready guards ahead.  One wrong move, however innocent or accidental, and . . . It didn’t bear thinking about. But, nevertheless, you did. Think about it. Every step of the way; and beyond, always looking for followers, watchers, anyone whose presence could be queried. The brain made a rapid recall of all those stories of would-be escapists from the East who failed to make it across the desolate divide. Those who had been dragged back,… Continue reading

WAR has been declared.  It has long been simmering with spasmodic outbreaks of invective hurled across the Great Grammatical Divide separating the two sides. But now it is out in the open. Apostrophe or no apostrophe, that is the question (as the greatest source of precise English would likely have defined it). It is no longer a matter of fusillades of mud-slinging between grammarians and the anti-punctuation heretics. It is now a costly matter of law. To be settled in the courts, no less. One more battleground in the widening split between the woke and non-woke. And all because one… Continue reading