I resolved from the start of this commitment to sociological and autobiographical fragments not to include/expose my (nuclear) family to public gaze; and this was obviously right. So in recalling once more ‘moments’ from my past I am omitting many vital, intimate and permanent memories. It is often and appropriately said that as you get… Read More »
On retiring, contentedly enough, in 2013, I began to think through my future in more detail. I’d never had any intention of stopping either lecturing or writing/publishing (though I didn’t for a moment presume a flow of invitations for the former or interest/acceptance in relation to the latter). The thing about retiring is that you… Read More »
I retired on 1 October, 2013, a few days shy of 65, and a month short of being entered for the REF. Cunning eh? It brought to an end a solid baby-boomer career, one not without its tribulations, but tribulations carrying a lesser degree of threat than that faced by my successors. For Paul Higgs… Read More »
I had two alternatives titles in mind for this short quasi-autobiographical blog. The first was ‘Prince Charles and I’, the second ‘Me and Prince Charles’. The first strikes as a little courtly – as in the Queen’s routine refrain, ‘My husband and I’ – but accords with a pattern of speech I was taught and… Read More »
From the early 1970s until I retired in 2013 I lectured on ‘death and dying’ to medical students, initially at Charing Cross HMS, then the Middlesex HMS, and finally at UCL Medical School (strange that all but the last no longer exist, having been incorporated into, or swallowed whole by, Imperial College and UCL respectively).… Read More »
I suppose there is an inevitable gap between reading and writing. In the late ‘noughties’ I added reading ‘Maggie’ Archer to a long-term familiarity with the works of Roy Bhaskar. Eventually, if this is the apt phrase, it bore fruit in my published work. (I have blogged about her work in some detail outside of… Read More »
While I was engaged in trying to establish a virtual Institute of Sociological Studies at UCL, my published work shifted into new areas, at last theoretically (I stuck pretty much with health inequalities and stigma studies). In a sentence I looked in more detail at Roy Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realism and became more familiar with… Read More »
Sooner or later I shall in all probability return to chronology and pick up on the final stages of my career at UCL. But first I have a few more reflections arising directly from the last two fragments on: (a) writing and solitude, and (b) compromises and capitalism. It is a item triggered by reading… Read More »
My predilection for solitary reading and writing, which doubtless has its pros and cons, is in all likelihood associated with other personality traits. Over a period of decades I have moved ‘leftwards’ politically. There was no sudden lurch towards Marx and Marxism, though I came gradually to the view, articulated in an earlier fragment, that… Read More »
I have ruminated on and off about being an only child and being happy with my own company. I have also discussed writing on my own, the norm for me since my undergraduate days. Sitting in the corners of cafes and bars, initially with exercise book and biro and latterly with my laptop has been… Read More »