Monthly Archives
Further to this morning discovery that I was locked out of the indoor-access to the garage, both Emma and I have fiddled and tweaked and coerced the lock to get it open. We’ve tried WD40, we’ve tried brute force, we’ve…
Continue readingI don’t think that I ever imagined that I would have anything in common with David Cameron. It seems I do. During the summer of 2006, I car-shared to and from work with then-neighbour Caroline. The conversations we had ranged…
Continue readingThe increasingly dodgy lock on the internal garage door got to the impossible side of dodgy this morning. All I wanted is my a carton of orange juice and some birdseed (note: actual birdseed, not a metaphor for muesli) and…
Continue readingWiggy is home. Em and I went to visit her at her holiday retreat out on the Northampton road, and we decided to try bringing her home. If it doesn’t work out, she can always go back. So Wigs, if…
Continue readingI’d forgotten what it is like to receive mail addressed to yourself in your own hand on the doormat. I knew exactly what the letter was going to say, even before I opened it. Sadly as regards The End of…
Continue readingI’m back in the basement, the dungeon, the morgue. Okay, technically speaking its not actually any of those things, but it is unearthly quiet, it is at the back end of the building, and although its not technically in the…
Continue readingIt being an unexpected Monday off for Emma, we were just getting ready to go and visit Sue and Tilly for the day, when I got a call from the agency. OUP had been on the phone to them, desperate…
Continue readingFriday 24 July at 20:29 ⢠There I was, innocently making the tonight’s dinner, and Emma was in the lounge messing around on Facebook, and then suddenly she’s telling me that I have a new friend; someone very close to…
Continue readingThere is a time when events become beyond a joke. When one has to go out and drag Bella out of a bush for the fourth time in two months, is such a time! When do they stop being naughty…
Continue readingThursday 23 July at 13:27 ⢠Further to my earlier post, it feels good to be bookbinding again. Not that this quite like any other. Having assembled into order all the sections and worked out just how I am going…
Continue readingI’ve sat down to face a stack of paper, and to assemble it into some kind of book. Of course this is to be not just any book but a limited edition 74 page book containing the entire wedding playlist…
Continue readingThe line of bureaucracy doesn’t get any more exciting. My bi-weekly sign-on was uneventful, and the officials of the jobsworth centre were thoroughly uninterested by my news of my impending work. Ho-humm, at least for the moment they’ll continue to…
Continue readingWiggy has gone on holidays. Ever since we got the two new chickens she’s been a rotten old bully to poor Henny-penny, so this evening Auntie Debbie from the vets came and collected her, taking her home with her to…
Continue readingIt’s a blustery afternoon, too wet for gardening, so instead I set about finishing up this year’s jam making: today, strawberry jam – my favourite. Further to my experiences with the raspberry jam the other day, I make it in…
Continue readingWe haven’t been to Brill for a while and so that’s where we decided to go for a bit of a wander today. It’s been changeable weather today, and, true to form, as we arrived the rain pounded down on…
Continue reading~ It was 11 years ago that those immortal words ‘Thomas, keep on smiling and making jam…’ in a leaving card of mine. This year it seems to be a statement that is more appropriate than ever. Yes, there is…
Continue readingFurther to my visit to the NHS dentist in Bicester the other week, this afternoon I have been back there to have one my only two fillings redone. Consequently the left-side of my jaw and my tongue feels it is…
Continue readingAn infamous comment in a leaving card from the-best-temp-job-ever (sic.) in the summer of 1998 read, and I quote, keep smiling and making jam. I liked that comment, and I’ve tried to live by it ever since. There have been…
Continue readingThe last time there was a new Harry Potter film out, there was also the release of the last of the books which I was devouring. I also remember going to see The Order of the Phoenix post-interview in Didcot,…
Continue readingIt’s been one of those mornings, when, so close to finishing reading the current book, I had to make time to just sit, legs curled beneath me on the sofa, and read, and finish Helen Dunmore’s Crossing of Ingo, the…
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