I have recently released two new Apps to the iTunes App store:

• iGadget: Turn your iPhone or Apple Watch into an electronic “Swiss Army Knife”, with a diverse range of gadgets, each having an appealingly retro analog appearance.
  
• WikiLocal: It’s already your favorite Encyclopedia. Now make Wikipedia your favorite atlas too! Great for researching your next vacation, or when exploring your local region.
  

More details on both of these Apps can be found at the Palace Software website.

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

– T.S. Eliot 

  

I have been thinking about depth of connection today. What confuses me is how different my level of connection can be with different people, regardless of how long we have known each other.

I have “friends” I have known for decades who I really don’t know at all. We share small-talk, and we share time, but little else. I don’t know what really grips them at the deepest level of their souls.

And there are friends I have known for barely a week, who I can say with certainty are soul-mates and who know me so deeply we don’t even need to verbalise our thoughts; people to whom I can say the most outrageous things without fear of judgement or misunderstanding. 

How does this happen? I’m the common denominator, so it’s tempting to say it all depends on the other person. But I behave differently too, depending on the person to whom I’m relating. Why do I sometimes dive deep, exposing all my flaws and vulnerabilities without fear or pride? Why do I sometimes keep all that stuff safely tucked away, and present the veneer-du-jour instead?

I really don’t know the answer to “Why?”, but I do know how to recognise when the connection is something extraordinary: when we go so deep, so fast, that both of us start to feel the effects of emotional narcosis (and carry on despite the risk and the pain). It’s not just the thrill of the dive (though that is certainly an element of it). It’s also the joy of a mutual connection and intensity of communication that blows away the cobwebs of everyday life.

Time for me to spread my wings once again, and migrate south for the (northern) winter. It has been a privilege to call Blenheim Palace “home” for the past 5 months. We always had the good fortune to live in interesting places, but this was one of the most interesting yet, and I will miss the energy (and quixotically, also the peacefulness) of the Palace Estate.

But there’s also a bittersweet element to this migration: it’s my 7th international move, but only the second without a wife or children to accompany me. I’ll very much miss being nearby to Alex and Jennifer, but at the same time I am looking forward to seeing Jonathan and my extended family (parents and siblings) again in New Zealand. Hence the mixed feelings.

So in the immortal words of the Hoodoo Gurus:

Quote for the day:

“You’re not even a writer. Blogging isn’t writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation!”

– from Contagion

I have been re-watching the first series of The West Wing …

“I’m sleeping better. And when I sleep, I dream about a great discussion with experts and ideas and diction and energy and honesty. And when I wake up I think: ‘I can sell that’”

– President Bartlet.

Doesn’t this sound so utterly quaint and old-fashioned? But you know what? I prefer that 2000-era West Wing naïveté to today’s political cynicism and negativity.

I can’t even imagine a current politician wanting to engage in that kind of intelligent debate.

Everything still is possible; there’s such a huge amount of untapped positive capability in the world. But nothing good will happen while politicians believe that the only way to remain in power is to manipulate peoples’ fears that things will inevitably get worse.

Time to contemplate a world where Martin Sheen really does get to be President … “Right. What’s next?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Winston Churchill recently … he has a strong connection with this place, having been born in Blenheim Palace, just across the lake. And though he received a state funeral at Westminster Abbey, he is buried in the little church at Bladon, just outside the Palace Grounds.

His branch of the Spencer family wasn’t rich, despite being related to the Duke of Marlborough (our landlord, as it happens). So he needed to work for a living.

Obviously he did some of that work in his capacity as an MP and PM. But in his youth and again in retirement, most of his income came from journalism and writing. I had long known of his prolific output (43 full-length books), so I understood the quantity. But I was utterly ignorant of the quality until I was told this morning about Churchill winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953.

Many of Churchill’s books (particularly his memoirs) were written at Chartwell, the private house that’s most closely associated with his later life. Chartwell is a special place, with the spirit of the great man still clearly felt in every room. It is a privilege to be able to walk where he walked, breathe the air that he breathed, and appreciate the beauty of the place he called home.