A Disorderly Retirement
I can remember writing some time ago about what a perfect day would look like. I seem to recall that Italian piazzas, bruschetta and prosecco featured prominently*, but I have written so many blogs over the past few years that I couldn’t find it among all the files. I was curious to see what I’d…
The moon seems to be getting an awful lot of attention these days. You might say it was enjoying its moment in the sun, but the moon is inscrutable, so who’s to say? It’s definitely excelling itself this month, with a super moon on 1st August and a blue supermoon to look forward to on…
Now that I’ve learned what quiddling means, I can in all modesty reveal that it’s one of my special skills. I have spent years honing the art and I am, I think, justifiably proud of the result. I have the wonderful etymologist Susie Dent to thank for this insight. According to her, quiddling means frittering…
I think most people have a mental list of ambitious things they’d really like to achieve at some point in their lives, but just not yet. I’m not talking about home improvements or even the dreaded Bucket List, just vague thoughts lurking in the back of your mind about rather lovely, but somewhat challenging activities…
Although friends are very welcome to come and visit us, I’m thinking that when word gets out about how we entertain them, they might not be so keen. We love to see our friends and to show them around our newly adopted town. Newbury doesn’t disappoint: the canal is beautiful, the pubs are welcoming and…
I love an odd fact – I refuse to call them fun facts, which seems like a feeble attempt to liven up an essentially boring subject. I quite like the word factoid, which I think sounds futuristic and of the moment, but it also makes me think of less attractive words like paranoid, rheumatoid and…
Children love jokes and the longer they take to get to the punchline, the more they seem to enjoy them. A favourite from my childhood was the one about the wide-mouthed frog. It had all the elements needed to make it a perfect joke: funny facial expressions, an endless lead-in, a deeply flawed main character…
This week I have been shaking things up, sometimes literally and sometimes less so. The literal shake-up is mostly taking place in our garden, where I am trying to tie up the various rose bushes that are out of control. I know that it’s our national flower and much loved by many, but I can’t…
I have just come home from visiting the literary festival at Hay-on-Wye. It is one of the highlights of my year because I go with two lovely friends and we see fascinating people talking about their lives. It is a perfect combination. The speakers at Hay are truly an impressive bunch: they have launched world-changing…
My bookshelves fill me with shame. Not the fiction section – I’ve read most of those and am happily working my way through the unread ones. It’s the non-fiction ones that stare at me accusingly. The things I could have learned, the paths I could have taken, both literally and figuratively, if only I had…