My house has been in an ongoing state of chaos for the last week – I’m having yet more work done on it. This time, it’s the main bathroom, which has barely been touched since we moved in over fifteen years ago. We had it rewired, along with the rest of the house, as soon […]
Work’s pretty challenging again at the moment – four bids to get out of the door this week! So I’m pretty tired, and really the last thing I wanted to do was to drag myself out again in the evening. A night in front of the telly sounded really attractive! However, there was a Blues […]
It was particularly timely that I went to see Adrian’s Wall, the new play by the local Writer-in-Residence about four misfits walking the length of Hadrian’s Wall. I’ve recently started a new “MOOC” online course studying the Wall itself. The course is on the FutureLearn platform, and is being run by Newcastle University. The Wall […]
I was at Waitrose this afternoon, doing my regular food shop. Ahead of me in the queue for the till was someone I can only describe as a “Yummy Mummy” – somewhat floaty clothes, immaculate make-up, and a trolley full of organic baby food. She was clearly a signed-up member of the MyWaitrose loyalty-card club, […]
Jon the Potter at Eastnor Pottery generally doesn’t run his throwing workshops over the summer, finding that there is more demand for family and child-centric activities over the holidays. However, now that the schools are back, he’s restarted his weekend throwing courses and workshops aimed at adults. I was keen to get back into the […]
The new cleaners have got off to a somewhat shaky start. They certainly turn up on time every week, are much more reliable in that respect than my previous cleaning company. And they do a pretty good job at keeping the house relatively clean. However, there was a definite problem last week that has led […]
There is a brand new play on at Malvern Theatres this week, by their Writer in Residence, Nick Wilkes. Last time Malvern Theatres had a resident playwright, it was George Bernard Shaw, so this new guy has quite a bit to live up to! This new play was billed as a comedy, so I thought […]
There is a new Hercule Poirot murder mystery story just published. The literary estate of Agatha Christie has finally given in to the lures of a follow-on, and commissioned Sophie Hannah to write a new book in the style of Agatha Christie. I thoroughly enjoy a classic Christie murder mystery, and I think I must […]
It’s potato harvest season again. As I mentioned last year, every ten minutes from dawn to dusk, a tractor with a heavily loaded trailer full of potatoes goes down the hill past my house, and returns later back up the hill with a heap of potato-free soil in the trailer. This goes on daily for […]
The mice in the loft have been a real nuisance this summer. They start their scrabbling about 11:30pm and keep going intermittently until about 4am – all directly above my bed. It’s the intermittent bit that’s really the problem – I can generally ignore a constant background noise when I’m trying to get to sleep, […]
