Gradual !

Seismic !

Cataclysmic !

Three states of gradual buildup of stresses within the earth occurrence over many years.

This is me, my life, my teens and twenties, my thirties, forties and fifties and now my sixties.

Here I am, nearly sixty-one years old, recently delivered of a new puppy, making tentative arrangements for a landscape gardener to transform my rear courtyard into a Tuscan piazza and a date set for a professional decorator to magically change my living space into something totally beautiful and wonderfully surreal with just a few swish like movements of his magic brush. Yet here I am, nervously poignant with bated breath as to whether the tiny paint matchpots will actually satisfy my palette, even though my final colour destination has not yet arrived, I am still one of an intrepid mind.

Here is the dilemma. As of yesterday, I visited my neighbouring hotel, not far along the isthmus, the beautiful ‘Berry Head’. Upon entry I notice that the recently refurbished lounge and bar area complete with their spectacular colour-ways and design, match everything I tentatively had decided upon, even right down to the leather foot stools. Problem is, do I always want to keep reminding myself as to whether I want to actually be in “an” annex of a rectory where the once Rev’d Henry Francis Lyte lived who at the time wrote”Abide with Me” in 1847 or the fact I had actually made the decision before, well not before that particular date, but before a so-called interior designer did, who may have possibly charged a small fortune for the pleasure of doing so?

This is the story of my life, it’s the “Oval Room Blue saga” all over again.

Cataclysm strikes like the proverbial volcano with a capital C !

What is a ‘Black Swan’?

A black swan is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and is extremely difficult to predict; the term was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a finance professor, writer and former Wall Street trader. Black swan events are typically random and are unexpected.