When I first left home, many many years ago, my mother gave me a patchwork quilt which she had made for me. It’s a fascinating piece of family history to look at – it contains patches made from both my school dresses and those of my sister, fragments from skirts and dresses I associate with […]
A few years ago, Jeremy Paxman was in the news complaining about the declining quality of his new M&S underwear. He was of the considered, and somewhat forcibly-expressed, opinion that they no longer provided “adequate support”. Being Paxman, he got a personal reply from the CEO of M&S and was invited to bring the offending […]
My first use of my Theatre Membership was to buy a standby ticket to the Saturday matinee performance of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. This is apparently meant to be “one of the greatest plays of the last century”, and I’m afraid to say that I’d never even heard of it. It’s probably not something I’d have […]
When Christopher was alive, we went so regularly to Malvern theatre that we spent many years as “Members”. One memorable year we were “Silver Members” which gave us I think 18 top price theatre tickets to be used as we chose over the course of a year, plus two free cinema tickets per week. Mostly […]
This week, Malvern Theatres has been showing Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense. I hadn’t originally intended to go – I have an absolute aversion to P.G. Wodehouse; can’t stand the silly-ass-about-town, thick-as-a-brick Bertie Wooster; and am totally unsympathetic to the parasitic lives of the upper-crust as portrayed in the novels, which I refuse on […]
Nearly twenty years ago, shortly after Christopher and I were married, a deaf and dumb hawker came to the door of our flat selling household goods. Christopher was a much softer touch than me, and felt emotionally blackmailed into buying some oven gloves from him. It turned out to be a bad buy. As oven […]
I was back at Eastnor Pottery on Sunday. The clocks had gone forward, and it was a real struggle to get out of bed – I was still fast asleep when my alarm went off. The weather outside was pretty unpleasant – very strong winds and heavy rain, which wasn’t conducive to leaving my nice […]
I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with the state of the path leading from the drive to the front door, and finally decided that Enough was Enough, and I’d get something done about it. It was made of square concrete slabs, probably about 40cm on a side, and was anything but flat and level. There […]
My sister and brother-in-law have been staying for the weekend. Since I owed them at least a year’s worth of Christmas and birthday presents, I decided to take them out for dinner to Malvern’s best restaurant. The Terrace on the Hill is a brunch / light-lunch / afternoon-tea-and-cakes place during the week, but on Friday […]
I am very impressed with the surgical precision of the drain re-lining operation. It really was reminiscent of keyhole surgery, up to and including an endoscope! However, there is one rather unpleasant side-effect, and that’s the fumes from the solvent used to harden the resin-impregnated liner. They’ve been escaping via the plug-holes and permeating the […]
