Food Inglorious Food

I’m thinking about food. This is not unusual. I think about food a lot because I love it. I love eating it and despite being a random cook I occasionally love cooking it. But today I’ve been thinking about food in a different way. Musing on the social media activity I’ve seen of late, I…

Crazy Talk

I’ve started to become more and more intrigued at why so many of our Facebook statuses are about how mad we are. It’s really coalesced for me around the Minion meme, something I’ve taken a particular loathing to. Don’t get me wrong – Minions are great. I really enjoyed the early days of ‘Despicable Me’…

Piece of Cake?

Last weekend it was my sister Julia’s birthday. I made her a cake. It was ambitious. I am not a baking talent. So I’m going to blog you through what I did, and more importantly, what I did wrong so that should you ever be gripped by a similar urge you can have as much…

Lost Cause

There are some events in life that remind you why you like the people you like as much as you like them. Just back from a fantastic lazy, hazy, sunny, funny weekend on the Welsh borders, part of the starring role of which was a reunion with my best girl from university, Neek and her…

Last Week

There was a purple spring dusk over the M25 as we finished our journey home this time last week. Christopher Cross was on the radio, stuck somewhere between the moon and New York City. Three hundred miles away, somewhere in the clear North Wales air, a part of us was reaching for the crescent moon;…

Time to Fly

Mum finally gave up her fight today at 4.50am. She’d taken on a battle even she could not win but she gave it her best shot. Ten days in which her grip on life, always so exuberant, grew weaker. She’d given us all the chance to say goodbye; to spend time with her and each…

Wine, Women, Song and Easter Eggs

Easter Sunday. Our Easter egg hunt wasn’t the best ever. Our egg was on the floor of Jules’s car where it had been since Monday and none of us really had the heart to do conduct our usual race up and down the breakwater and into various strangers’ gardens in search of bonkers clues, at…

Magic Circle

We don’t know whether Mum’s planning to attempt some last minute Good Friday miracle where she disappears and comes back on Sunday ready for the traditional Easter egg hunt on the prom but in spite of all of our efforts to persuade her to let go, she’s still with us – looking greyer, eyes now…

Postcard from Limbo

The seagulls get up early here. Just as the bit of the dawn chorus without the baleful yellow eye and the razor sharp beak is warming up for its subtle and mellow performance they start to drone like giant recorders played by six year olds, drowning it all out. We’ve been in North Wales for…

Sing you Home

It’s an ordinary day. It’s A Monday. It’s a work day. On the news website our two top stories are someone biting off an actor’s ear and a school banning triangular flapjacks so they’re not used as ‘weapons’. The world is as crazy as ever. People are dying in Syria. My boots need re-heeling. My…