Heaven Knows I’m Miserables Now

After a week in which any bumping in to people or slight grazing on the sides of my car has been airily attributed to marching to ‘the music of a people who will not be slaves again’ I think it’s safe to say I’m in the grip of one of my periodic obsessions. It’s putting…

Don’t worry, it’s just a phase

I’m going through one of those dangerous clothes phases. They hit me about every ten years. They have nothing (really, NOTHING) to do with fashion and everything to do with some kind of atavistic adornment fetish. It usually starts with me wearing heels again and finding I quite like stalking around in them even though…

Notes on Xmas

I’m putting this in the Xmas decorations box for next year to refresh my memory on the Xmas rules I never seem to get the hang of. 1. When you first think ‘I could do my cards early this year, oh, but it looks a bit geeky to be this organised’ DO THEM or you…

Old Friend Arrives

There’s not much that really scares me. I like the dark. I can do heights as long as I don’t look down and I’m useless in water but just about competent enough not to sink. I love spiders and snakes and would have one about my person at all times if that were possible. I…

Goodbye 173

I’m sitting in the November dusk. It’s been a day of firsts. I dressed my first crab. I sent my 9 year old out for his first unaccompanied bike ride around the village and I walked into a bank and paid in a cheque for thousands and thousands of pounds. Sadly it wasn’t mine. The…

Winter Drawers On

It takes a lot of work-love to find it bearable to throw off the duvet on the first truly dark and drizzly Autumn day that the alarm marimbas (yes, an iphone)  into life at 5.15 . That morning arrived last week in a vicious swirl of rain and as I hauled myself out of bed and into…

All in the Best Possible Taste

It all began when the estate agent rang to update us on the viewings we’d had. Feedback, they said, had suggested it was hard to see the full potential of our family home (a solid North Wales dowager of a 4 bedroom semi) because the ‘large amount of furniture and, er, so on was, er, distracting.’ Huffily,…

Where Do I Begin?

I’ve just packed 45 years of memories into a dusty and rather magical three days. We’ve been clearing out the family home, unearthing layers of love affairs, acres of affection and a score or two of secrets. We’ve found old documents, essays, letters, bills, notes, yellowed newspaper articles – interspersed, as of course they would…

Sleep Tight, Big John

I did promise to explain more about the reasons for my fairly lengthy February blog-absence. We’ve done the broadband and I will bore you egregiously another time with lameo excuses about being busy and covering the UK in trains and cars like some kind of human emulsion.  But the big one – and I’ve not…

Gracias por La Musica

Ever since I danced to ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ on a holiday to Corfu back in  1976, I’ve had a boundless regard for the way songs sound in languages other than English.  If songs are so often about telling it from the heart, English would seem to me to be the most unsuitable language. Somehow, it…