Category Archives: 2012

Ahem This hurtling year crashed to its conclusion amidst a welter of car problems, last-minute work deadlines, large cheques outgoing, in-laws and daughters incoming, and all the coruscant cornucopia of Christmas. We had continuing problems getting our Jeep mended, after the computer program for the dashboard controls failed and took the transmission system with it, and […]

Ahem After an evanescent snow white weekend at the tail-end of October, the first week of November was warm and sunny in and around Basel. But for the rest of the month it wasn’t, and the month ended with more snowfalls. But apart from most mornings when the grey mist settled around the houses, it […]

Ahem   For those interested I proffer a work update. I am drafting, editing and writing, now known as “content generation”, and content in so doing. This contrasts with my situation last year, when I was averaging one job application every two days and seemed able to do little else. In all, I applied for […]

Ahem   Alli’s 50th birthday took place amid a maelstrom of memorable events and in an oasis of hot and sunny weather. After considering and eventually rejecting as unnecessary my annual offering of revitalising cream, my two really big secret surprises, nurtured for several weeks, came to fruition despite weeks of warnings from Alli that […]

Ahem We shared the final days of our holiday at La Hune with our Belgian friends Laurence, Claude and their son Corentin, which provoked another round of applied gourmandising; the need for some additional explorations around the local vineyards and domains; and another visit to the Auberge de Bardigues. We came back by separate ways, […]

Ahem There are some smells in daily rural life that can only be described as irredeemably evil. Over this neck of the woods periodically wafts an odour (or should that be ordure?) which I am sure is the authentic and original smell of organic farming.  Can one be pro-organic but reject the smell of hell […]

Ahem   Ella has landed her first job in journalism, getting selected as the music editor for the Loughborough University magazine, Label. She has to manage the editorial section, decide what to write about, which articles should go in and which should go online, as well as manage the team of music writers. In the […]

Ahem   The first weeks of the month afforded few favors to those who regard Beltane as starting the light half of the year. The maydays were gloomy, only giving way in the last ten days to a speculatively cool half-spring, and, from the final weekend, a blue-sky summer. But the month of May is […]

Ahem   There has been a revolution in our household. Since I gave Alli an Apple Ipad as a wedding anniversary present, she has scarcely been off it. She uses it to listen to BBC Radio 2, receive, check and send emails, and also now to play a scrabble-type game with random people simultaneously from around the […]

Ahem   In these partially wooded fields of this corner of the Alsace on a weekend morning, single people in cars or vans drive around repeatedly trying to find somewhere wide open and uninhabited in which to walk their dangerous dog. You can tell them apart from drivers as they park uncomfortably somewhere off-road and […]