After a long break: the words "european" and "inspirational " in the same sentence, as europe monumentally come from way behind to win golf's premier event, the ryder cup. Uniquely, ryder pits those two old world titans, the us of a and europe, against each other, and I have always been warmed by this very rare non-political instance in which europe is enthusiastically embraced across the patch as a national identity. I am not one of golf's bigger fans, but yesterday as I went about my business, entertaining and feeding my sister and family for lunch, ferrying the kids to and fro, looking after my mother, doing chores and then crystallising an analysis of stockport town centre's future, I dipped…

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One of the reasons a two-state solution to israel-palestine gets further away every day is hebron. When peace is finally won, the 1967 “green line” will loosely be the border, with in-roads made by permanent settlements compensated by land elsewhere. Kiryat arba though (7000 jews) lies deep in the west bank, and borders hebron, home of some 250,000 palestinians and around 400 jews. Dozens were massacred there in the 1930s; and dozens of muslims in the 1994 by baruch goldstein. Over time a slice of hebron, linking it to kiryat arba, has been carved out and emptied of palestinians. I saw it myself when I went for a walk down that road with a friend shortly after the massacre. The…

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I have, this new year, been rather forced to consider the utility of the old; and indeed the fact that very slowly, but most surely, that adjective will one day be mine. Will I then be only a burden to my children and tax-paying society, guilty about everything I spend ? As a larger number of pensioners vote than any other demographic (youth are the worst; 2 pensioners use as many votes as 7 under-25s), they have disproportionate influence, and over time have redefined what was invented as a safety net against starvation, but is now more like a goodie bag that also, if not mainly, supports the better off. British pensioners, for example, regardless of income, get free tv…

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For my birthday - ten to midnight, 9 9 69, though officially the tenth - I got a surprise trip to see leonard cohen, a wonderful old trooper who’s a cross between a blues brother and al pacino, who he strongly resembles. It was an absolutely magical evening, four hours from start to finish, with no support and endless songs that I somehow knew smoothly going from one to the next even as you thought there couldn’t possibly be more. It was simple and elegant, melodic and poignant and the most mysterious lyrics of anyone, stroked out ever deeper, in every sense. They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within. I'm coming…

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With the elder getting so much attention, on saturday I took out the younger (8). We started at the local pool, as he was always a big fan (not coincidentally, unlike his brother - see 29 august 2010) and the olympics have inspired both him to swim and us to convince him to go to lessons. He loved it, going up two classes in one session. Then subway, his current favourite, cashing in two of the seven promised on hols so we could walk past one in barcelona and have more of that fancy food we horrible parents force them to try. We then marched up and down heald green high street, buying bread from the bakery and odds and…

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In my frankfurt days, the financial times was the indispensable daily coverage on europe, but it was the economist I read for everything else, and which was the last (even now) to resist my falling into the internet, even if reading it all, once a job done by saturday lunchtime, may now take weeks. I remember when the charlemagne column started, and how I compared my own meagre effort to it, occasionally beating them to it. Over time, it has become considerably less brusselsphere and more anglo; a shame. I must admit though that a few weeks ago it struck a chord, reflecting how the euro, intended as the step to cross the no-going-back rubicon in bringing member states closer…

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A side effect of my other half being in budapest with the kids, is that I get to drive to work rather than my usual bike-train combination (26 september 2010). Not that I’m complaining; in fact I’m rather proud of both the health and public transport aspects of my norm (13 and 2 december 2009); but things are definitely easier with my resource burning, expensive car park using, single passenger citroen picasso. My northern think tank friends brought out an interesting paper on this today, showing that contrary to uk public perception, motoring has actually got cheaper over the past 20 years – even as the cost of public transport has risen by over 60% in the last 10. This…

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During the earlier part of our stay, I got through one of the few george orwell novels I have never read. Perhaps I was waiting for this occasion, as it made it so much more exciting to read of the paving stones of la rambla being torn up and thrown into barricades one day, and to be treading over them the next. Evenings with the book was history and the sarcastic culture of war, which complemented wonderfully the sights and sounds that filled my days. If it isn’t his greatest work (apart from the obvious, that would be burmese days), it makes up for it in vivacity and the acuteness of its chronicling of a unique period in a unique…

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My first exposure to spain was probably the song, a british phenomenon of my early childhood; and it then bounded around asterix and never being able to work out why rain should fall on a plane. I have only actually ever been there once, a short weekend in barcelona, when I was working in a building with students and never even got out to see the place. Fifteen years on, I’m finally going back, on our family summer holiday, and so as well as looming large in my thoughts on europe – will it be the straw that breaks the euro’s back – it is also now in the forefront of my personal life, as we check out beaches, museums…

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