Ahem On 5th December, Jurrat knelt in the autumn leaves before our first-born daughter Jessie in the garden of Broad Oaks and asked her to marry him. She accepted and her sister Gwen (who was nearby) burst into tears, and Jaxon, their sensitive Staffie, jumped for joy up and down around them. So we will […]
Category Archives: 2021
2026 Ahem
SCUDDED PROPRIETORIALLY TRIMMINGS: January 2026
Ahem, During this interminably long month of heaving weather, our far south-east corner, ancestral home [...]
Continue reading
02
Feb
Feb
2025 Ahem
QUERYING PAKKELEG CONVULSED: December 2025
Ahem Our Christmas celebrations normally start after we celebrate Gwen’s birthday on the 12th, when [...]
Continue reading
01
Jan
Jan
2025 Ahem
FOODELICIOUS WASHBOARD BELEAGURED: November 2025
Ahem, Richard and Marie, from Cholsey in Oxfordshire, where Alli and I lived just after [...]
Continue reading
01
Dec
Dec
2025 Ahem
HYENA FUNGI HALLOWEEN: October 2025
Ahem There is a village close to the Toleza Farm in Malawi that goes by [...]
Continue reading
01
Nov
Nov
2025 Ahem
SPIRITUAL CONTINGENT GONGS: September 2025
Ahem As August turned to September, I was with my Kiwi friends Ramon and Colleen [...]
Continue reading
01
Oct
Oct
03
Dec
Dec
Ahem My previous one-scener blue moon trips to London have now turned into weekly or twice-weekly trips into the City for my temporary stint as interim speechwriter at the Guildhall. I face down forlorn memories of my commute two decades ago into Greyface Gormenghast Gritty Thameslink, the grimmest railway station in Britain. I would slope […]
30
Oct
Oct
Ahem So they want to make me go to rehab, I said yeah yeah yeah? The NHS has answered my enquiry from last year about how to resolve an increasingly painful lower back, and sent me for some sessions at a weekly course called Rehab Gym taking place locally in Haywards Heath, the all-time national […]
01
Oct
Oct
Ahem, By general agreement Alli’s birthday this year was more of a birtholiday. We had first visited the sceptred Isle of Wight 25 years ago and I am the only one to remember any of the key details which included a magical day in Blackgang Chine. This time Alli and I started by looking around […]
31
Aug
Aug
Ahem Sometimes I run out of patience and often I run out of things to say. We occasionally run out of food items, thanks to Brexit’s damage to reliable food supplies. My account is running a deficit, which makes me run scared of running dry or on empty. I have run a fever and I […]
31
Jul
Jul
Ahem I’m sure that I’m the last person in Little Britain to have noticed that tea shops and coffee houses are replacing traditional pubs throughout town and country as social centres and meeting places. I even wonder if the British pub can survive much longer in its present form. It’s yet another British institution now […]
03
Jul
Jul
Ahem My vegetables are being pilfered and pillaged. Every time I go to the garden, at least five fat pigeons disengage themselves from the already skeletal broccoli, beans and courgettes, and flap unhurriedly up to reclaim their posts in the surrounding trees. Last year there were hardly any of these flying rats. I would rather […]
31
May
May
Ahem A lot of things happened on Mayday, as they should. In medieval England, it was one of the biggest, most popular and least controversial holidays of the year, the focus of a week of ribaldry, licence and lust, when the rural working class (90% of the population) got drunk for days on fermented beer, […]
01
May
May
Ahem Easter gave us an opportunity to use the garden for a childish grown-up family Easter Egg hunt and to see Jessie, Jurrat, Ella, Sam, and celebrity Rottweiler Maisie. I got accused of indolence in laying the chocolate eggs on behalf of the Easter rarebit as too many of them were found close to the […]
03
Apr
Apr
Ahem We’ve been thinking of renting a cottage on the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear. But it might well be. Alli nearly booked a place in Bembridge on the south east coast a couple of months ago. However, we held back as the owner would not return deposits to renters once they […]
- 1
- 2