MikeH

Know Your Role - Postcards From Across the Pond The title is a quote from renown philosopher Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and it tells me everything that is wrong with my writing. Lee Child knows his role, as does Richard Osmon and the lesser-known E...

A man's gotta know his limitations ...

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Success, and something to ponder ...

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A stranger comes to town ...

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AI Or Not AI - Postcards From Across the Pond It’s no secret that I am anti-AI, but I had a conversation with a friend recently that was quite illuminating. Not mind-changing, simply illuminating. Let’s ignore for the moment the vast resources AI...

It's coming for us ...

postcardsfromacrossthepond.com/ai-or-not-ai/

An Inauspicious Beginning - Postcards From Across the Pond As the new year rolls in, I am keen to adopt my new persona (this is NOT a New Year’s Resolution!) as a non-smoker with his self-publishing habit behind him. But it’s getting off to a rocky start. Fir...

Back to the grindstone ...

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Seriously, I need a drink ...

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Falling into Place - Postcards From Across the Pond I love it when a plan comes together. That, of course, assumes I had a plan, which I didn’t, so I guess it would be more appropriate to report that things are randomly falling into place through no fa...

Falling into Place ...

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New Tricks - Postcards From Across the Pond For the past twenty-three years and nine months, I have lived thirteen miles (by road; less than ten as the crow flies, assuming the crow flies in a perfectly straight line) from the town of Horley, y...

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Something I've never done before ...

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Knowing My Rights - Postcards From Across the Pond Like one in three people in the UK, I am a renter. And like them, the main reason for this is that I don’t happen to have £435,000 (over half a mill in USD) stuffed in my back pocket. Unlike them, how...

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Options - Postcards From Across the Pond Having recently returned from our sojourn in the USA, and having settled back into UK life, I think it’s time to make some comparisons concerning my erstwhile and current abodes. The US remain coffee ...

Reviewing my options ...

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Concord - Postcards From Across the Pond To give my son a break, and the cats a chance to calm down, we went to Concord, MA for a few days, and it was marvellous. For most of my life I lived within day-trip distance yet never thought to visi...

Visiting America's roots ...

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America 2025 - Postcards From Across the Pond Leaving Usually, the thing I worry most about on these trips is whether the cab will show up or not. This time, it’s whether we’ll be sitting on the wing. You see, we don’t have seats on the flight. F...

Back from America ...

postcardsfromacrossthepond.com/america-2025/

ComiCon - Postcards From Across the Pond I just returned from a fortnight in America. I will write about that soon, but I had to get this out of the way first, especially after my previous post: While visiting my family in New York, I went w...

My pilgrimage to Nerdvana ...

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It's All About the Story - Postcards From Across the Pond Today I went to the Cuckfield Bookfest, and it confirmed for me something that I have been thinking about for the past few months. But first, the Bookfest. We went to see Lucy Mangan in a Q&A with Ana...

This time, it's not about the books, it's about the story ...

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Scotland North - Part II - Postcards From Across the Pond On Monday we went to Tobermory, a fishing village set up by the Scottish Government about two hundred years ago, so it’s not that old. I think they told us why the houses were painted those bright col...

New Post: Mull - Part II

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Scotland North - Part I - Postcards From Across the Pond On Saturday, we went to Mull. We travelled with a tour group (Brightwater), as we have done before, but this time there were minor differences: there were only a dozen people in the group, and all of ...

New Post:

On to Mull - Part I ...

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Edinburgh - Postcards From Across the Pond On our final day in Glasgow, we visited the Kelvin Grove Art Gallery and Museum because, well, you really need to. It is an amazing collection of art, sculpture, rare exhibits, and oddities, sorta lik...

Off to Edinburgh now ...

postcardsfromacrossthepond.com/edinburgh/

Completing the Set - Postcards From Across the Pond A few weeks back, we bought new suitcases. The reason was, the nested set we had included four, two of which we never used. This seemed wasteful, so we gave them away and bought two new ones, both hav...

Yeah, we went on holiday. Again.

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Flat - Postcards From Across the Pond The other day, while walking past the Skate Park, a notice painted on a wall caught my attention. It read: The Earth is Flat. And it opened my eyes. I wish I could thank the brave rebel who risked an ...

A bit of satire this week ...

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Coffee - Postcards From Across the Pond The worst cup of coffee I have ever had—US or UK—was on the 3rd of September 2011. I know the date because it was so bad I took a picture. It tasted just like it looks, but colder. It was weak, tepid,...

My final word on coffee, at least until I visit the US again ...

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Electronics - Postcards From Across the Pond For most of my working life, I was an IT professional. Ten years of retirement, however, have left me unprepared for dealing with today’s electronics. If you care to refer to the previous post, you wi...

We thought we were done with electronic troubles. But we thought wrong ...

postcardsfromacrossthepond.com/electronics/

Closing in on the final chapters of my WIP. The rewrite is going to need do do some heavy lifting.

Telly Troubles - Postcards From Across the Pond A couple of weeks ago, we bought a new telly, even though our old one was only two and a half years old. It wasn’t that it was out-dated or had stopped working, it was simply driving us crazy. A few m...

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The trouble with Tellies ...

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Italy: The North - Part III - Postcards From Across the Pond Day Five: – Milan On Sunday, the 6th of July, we had to get up extra early to catch the bus to Milan. We were told breakfast packs would be made available but, when we asked the desk clerk and the kit...

New Post: Italy - the final instalment ...

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Italy: The North - Part II - Postcards From Across the Pond Day Three – Parma ham and Vinegar Parma: a lot of history and cathedrals, but I’m only here for the ham. Friday, the 4th of July, we went to Parma. It was a long trip, but the bus had air conditioning...

Italy, Part II

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Italy: The North - Part I - Postcards From Across the Pond Intro Last autumn, having sadly overlooked Italy during my first 23 years in Britain, we decided to visit the southern region. It was a lovely holiday, so we followed it up with a trip to the northern...

Back on holiday. Italy this time ...

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Doing Devon - Postcards From Across the Pond Where No One Can Hear You Scream Some months back, we got it in our heads to do a bit of glamping. Fast forward to now and we’re in an Airstream caravan (a 1956 American Classic) and it is … interesti...

New post on "The (Second) Longest Running, Continuously Active, Personal Blog on the Internet" -- Doing Devon

postcardsfromacrossthepond.com/doing-devon/

De-Plastification - Postcards From Across the Pond I had the unfortunate occasion to read an article about micro-plastics the other day. Here’s the tl;dr version: There is no good news. The human race is essentially a huge lab experiment run by the pe...

New post: first the bad new, then the worse news ...

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Nine and a Half Days - Postcards From Across the Pond I’ve gotten a lot of feedback, and milage, out of my previous post about swearing, which gave rise to more than a few interesting discussions. Suffice it to say that people have differing views on, an...

Truly shocked by the "Nine Days" reference in my previous post, I decided to explore that iconic event a bit more.

I think we can give it a rest after this ...

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Good to see you are still at it.