Winter sunshine in my study Winter view from our gate Winter sunshine on our lane

My snowdrops yesterday My snowdrops today Snowdrops along the lane, in the lee of the wall – today    

My fridge door

I was going to write a post about how the photo of me at the side of the blog is out of date and how I might be committing fraud by having i...

The first time I sat next to Dave in the university library 46 years ago this month (are we really that ancient?)  I was appalled at his beh...

I decided I wasn’t being fair to Joanna Trollope in my last post by making something up as an example of her fractured dialogue. So here is ...

I’ve just read Joanna Trollope’s reworking of Sense and Sensibility – written as part of a current project to bring all of Jane Austen’s no...

This picture post is for all of you but especially for M, because she’s not well, and reading a long post is hard work. Winter sunset behi...

First, thank you for reading my blog this year. It’s a weird thing that there are so many of you I don’t know and will never know, and yet o...

This post is in two parts – first the pictures, and then a piece for those of you who are interested in plot and story. This was our lane ...

Yes, we have snow – hence the new header. I felt very proud of myself on Christmas Day. I got all the fourteen items ready at the same tim...

It was lovely. And this is my home made “card” from the man who hates Christmas.   I love it!

Zoë and I went to see It’s a Wonderful Life at the weekend, a film I have seen once a year for the last OMG I don’t know how many, and a po...

I’ve just had my usual lovely lengthy Sunday morning phone chat with my big brother, and he upbraided me for swearing on the blog. He said h...

I was in Bakewell’s answer to a health food shop yesterday buying broken mixed nuts, and the assistant said “A lot of people have been after...

When you’re a person who loves Christmas, but it takes you two days to decorate your three foot high tree and you hear yourself saying “Fuck...

I’m struggling with all kinds of darkness. And I just looked at last year’s blog posts for the same week, and it was just the same then, so ...

This week I’ve been rewatching (is that a word? I’ve just woken up from a nightmare and my brain is addled) As Time Goes By and loving it a...

These are dark days – literally and figuratively – so I thought I’d share some good news with you that might have passed you by. Or… if yo...

Did you ever have one of those days where you woke up late because you’d had four hours lying awake in the middle of the night (for no reaso...

Winter in the country can be a bummer - the dark, the cold, the mud, the leaching out of colour, the lack of access to what’s going on elsew...

Only read this post if you have nothing better to do. Firstly, it’s a long rambling petty tirade about an activity I hate. And secondly, I’m...