I used to really enjoy knitting. I was pretty good at it, and found it very relaxing after a hard day at work. But I haven’t done any knitting at all for the past three and a half years. I told myself that was because it was giving me a nasty case of RSI in […]
I went back to Eastnor Pottery again today to do some throwing. I didn’t want to make anything in particular – I’ve got plenty of plates, bowls and mugs already, but I did want to have a play at throwing different vase shapes. When I was in Greece over Christmas, I visited several museums with […]
….. But I haven’t heard anything from the mice for nearly a week. I’m hopeful that the ultrasonic rodent repellers might actually be making a difference! UPDATE I did speak too soon! There was definitely a mouse around again last night, above my bed, at around half past midnight. Though to be fair, it did […]
I have been sleeping badly for ages, and would really like to do something about it without resorting to sleeping pills – it would be much better to fix the underlying problem if possible, than to resort to drugging myself. I noticed that I slept much better in Greece than I’m used to. Of course, […]
Today would have been Christopher’s fiftieth birthday. We only really celebrate decades in our family, so I am sure that we would have had fun commemorating this milestone, probably involving both friends and a very good meal somewhere. More than that, given the difference in age between us, I am now older than he ever […]
I was talking to my next-door neighbour last weekend, and she said how much she was enjoying the ongoing saga of my continuing battles with the mice. When she’d stopped laughing, she sympathised, and said that they had similar problems with mice in the attic. She asked whether I’d tried ultrasonic rodent repellers, as they […]
It’s been pouring with rain, seemingly for weeks. I’m so glad that I got the garden sorted two years ago, as at least I don’t have to worry about getting home after a downpour and finding the terraces in a muddy heap in my kitchen! And I’m far enough up the Malvern Hills that if […]
We don’t really “do” Christmas in our family. But we do make an effort to all get together sometime between Christmas and New Year at my parents’ house, to have a big family dinner and exchange stocking-filler presents. So I stopped off in Kent on my way back from Greece, and my sister and her […]
One of the things I enjoy about walking round cities built on ancient foundations, is that you can turn a corner and find yourself face-to-face with 2000 year old remains, just sitting there in the middle of the street! That was certainly the case with Thessaloniki. There was a large Roman forum, still right in […]
The absolute highlight of the trip for me (as I think for most people, unless they had a frankly unhealthy obsession with early Byzantine basilicas) was the museum at Vergina, displaying the contents of the Macedonian royal tombs. These had been the subject of a superb exhibition at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford in 2011. […]
