A Disorderly Retirement
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…
People travel with many different hopes and expectations, but if I find myself somewhere that looks like nothing I’ve seen before among people who behave in ways I don’t expect, then I am completely happy. Japan is one of those places. I think about it quite often, particularly when I see people around me who…
There was a time when we did all the painting and wallpapering in our house. Finances played a large part, but I used to quite enjoy it and the results were extremely satisfying; however, those days are long gone. I must have been a different person then. I now know that it is even more…
I have just got back from a wonderful adventure in Japan and South Korea, and although my mind is full of vibrant images, what I’m really thinking about is food. I don’t eat meat, which is very easy at home, but a bit harder in countries where you have no knowledge of the language beyond…