I’ve been having a very frustrating week with my IT. My iPad started it off – I was using it on Saturday evening, when suddenly the touch screen stopped working. I tried doing several hard reboots, but no joy. I then tried restoring it from iTunes on my laptop, but that required me to verify […]
I’ve been spending my evenings for the last few weeks doing another online course on the FutureLearn MOOC platform. This one is from the University of Wollongong (no, me neither) and is studying The Hobbit. Not, in this case, Tolkien’s book of the same name. I was forced to read that by an over-enthusiastic English […]
It’s been a dull and rainy day today, and this is a dark house at the best of times. So this morning I walked into the living room and turned on the lights. There was a flash of light, a shower of red sparks and a very loud bang. All the lights at this end […]
It’s that time of year again when I get a stream of emails from Christopher, or rather from a Google Calendar that he set up before he died, giving me loads of reminders of things to do around the house. So far, he’s given me a ghostly nudge to: Get the central heating serviced Shop […]
I’ve always enjoyed doing craft work as a hobby. Perhaps it comes from being an engineer and wanting to make things? I suppose these days my main craft hobby is pottery, but I also knit, sew and embroider amongst other things. But one thing I’d never done is counted cross stitch. Until, that is, I […]
Back in the Spring, I bought some bird feeders for the garden and hung them in the corner between the two bedrooms. That used to be a very boring part of the garden – other than an acer tree turning vaguely pink in autumn, nothing much ever happened there. But since I started regularly restocking […]
For years, I’ve had newspapers delivered at the weekend by the closest newsagent, who is several miles away in the nearest village. It’s too far (and probably too dangerous, given how fast the main road is) for a regular paperboy/girl to do the round on their bike, so a chap drives out in his car […]
I had my sister and brother-in-law staying here over the weekend. We have all been so busy this year that I don’t think we’ve actually seen each other since the New Year, and they certainly haven’t stayed here for over three years. It’s shocking how time flies by! I sometimes stay overnight with my sister […]
After a disappointingly barren summer, Malvern Theatres has had a couple of interesting things on in quick succession. This week’s offering was How the Othe Half Loves, the 1969 Alan Acykbourn classic. Apparently, it had a prolonged and critically acclaimed run in London last year,and is now on tour around the country – although with […]
The attic has been blessedly quiet over the summer, but the change in weather over the past few weeks seems to have driven the local mice to find some shelter. At any rate, I’ve started hearing the occasional pitter-patter of tiny feet above my chair in the living room, and the other night it sounded […]
