In the Fullness of Time: Reflections on Everyday Life

‘In the fullness of time’ is a book for dipping into. There is no requirement to read the pages in any special order. Rather, these fifty short essays should be seen as a set of pictures for the mind to visit, savour and then move on. If I have got it right, each visit will engage the imagination, jog the memory and stimulate ideas.

Each essay describes my reflections on some everyday event. They are arranged in eight, themed sections, each introduced by a Merrily Harpur illustration. You may find some of my observations quirky or unexpected, but all are personal to me and reflect the insights of a 75-year-old man who is ten years into retirement and only now learning how to express himself in plain English.

As a doctor, teacher and scientist, I wrote tens of thousands of words on matters medical or scientific in which bias, imprecision and free association were taboo. In retirement, I have shed the constraints of such writing and here are selected products of my new-found freedom. The essays here are a selection from over 230 blog posts that have been published on greyhares.org since 2009.

“A self-confessed snooper with an insatiable curiosity about everyone he encounters – the stranger the better – Joe Collier describes the pleasures, irritations, mishaps and oddities of everyday life with a humane and humorous eye”, Lee Langley (winner of the Writers’ Guild Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize)

"A self-confessed snooper with an insatiable curiosity about everyone he encounters - the stranger the better - Joe Collier describes the pleasures, irritations, mishaps and oddities of everyday life with a humane and humorous eye", Lee Langley (winner of the Writers' Guild Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize)