Ahem Our Christmas celebrations are different to those of ten and more years ago. Now in our third age, we no longer go to pantomimes but to shows that would once have been fringe but are now mainstream, while the old mainstream is now nostalgia. This year I went with Alli, Jessie, Ella, and Sam […]
Category Archives: 2024
2026 Ahem
SCUDDED PROPRIETORIALLY TRIMMINGS: January 2026
Ahem, During this interminably long month of heaving weather, our far south-east corner, ancestral home [...]
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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 [...]
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Jan
Jan
2025 Ahem
FOODELICIOUS WASHBOARD BELEAGURED: November 2025
Ahem, Richard and Marie, from Cholsey in Oxfordshire, where Alli and I lived just after [...]
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Dec
Dec
2025 Ahem
HYENA FUNGI HALLOWEEN: October 2025
Ahem There is a village close to the Toleza Farm in Malawi that goes by [...]
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Nov
Nov
2025 Ahem
SPIRITUAL CONTINGENT GONGS: September 2025
Ahem As August turned to September, I was with my Kiwi friends Ramon and Colleen [...]
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Oct
Oct
01
Dec
Dec
Ahem November’s weather became a lugubrious national talking point with deified weather presenters being lambasted for reporting what amounted to ‘gloomy’ weather. Grey clouds weighed down on southern England like the cover on a pressure cooker, but I wasn’t complaining. However, I did re-read Baudelaire’s Spleen, possibly the greatest poem ever on the multifarious subject […]
31
Oct
Oct
Ahem Ten minutes of light drizzle fell on the dusty ochre fields the morning after my arrival at Toleza Farm in Malawi, where I spent most of a month that is normally the hottest and driest of the year. Farm records show that virtually no rain had fallen there for nine months. However, gusts of […]
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Sep
Sep
Ahem The English summer, impolite at the best of times, was damnably rude: it left abruptly, neither saying goodbye, nor asking leave to withdraw, nor offering excuses for its sub-par performance over past weeks. In its place we had rolling grey clouds, morning mists, evening chills, and repetitive downpours. Perversely, it then returned in mid-month, […]
31
Aug
Aug
Ahem Ella and Sam were formally wed on 24th August in Wadhurst Castle in East Sussex, a glorious culmination of many months of diligence and planning by the couple, aided by close friends and sisters. They designed and organised most of the event themselves after choosing the venue and catering. It was also the confirmation […]
02
Aug
Aug
Ahem, The simple scoreline did not truly reflect the embroiled imbroglio of the football match. It was a game of two halves: the post and bar were each rattled; there were fouls, handballs, swallow dives, hospital passes, and theatrical agony all over the pitch; six players were booked; two were sent off; two goals disallowed, […]
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Jul
Jul
The uncertain weather continued during the first half of the month, ruining the plans of charities, open days, village fetes, Prime Ministerial speeches, cricket, concerts, and other flummery activities. The British weather’s main characteristic is that rain is always imminent, as John Lennon had noted. The phrase “Flaming June” implies that the month traditionally brings […]
01
Jun
Jun
Our amazing dog Bonnie, possibly a Bedlington Whippet, or maybe a small Schnauzer Lurcher, born in a rescue centre over 18 years ago, and more recently very frail and forgetful, as well as nearly blind and deaf, disappeared about two weeks ago. She became confused one evening in the garden at Broad Oaks in Burgess […]
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Apr
Apr
Ahem, A few days after I had, with all due ceremony, carefully poured twenty bright and bushy-tailed goldfish from a large transparent plastic bag into our rejuvenated pond, aware that the fish would be in temporary shock and hiding behind pond foliage for a while, Alli and I slowly began, quite separately, to realise that […]
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Apr
Apr
Ahem, Muttley was one of my childhood heroes (along with Rolf Harris). As an infant TV-watcher, I thought Muttley was a philosophical genius; he could summarise all relevant social discourse into three cardinal responses: a chronic wheezy snigger; a frustrated oath-laden mutter grumble; and impatient agreement by rapid head-nodding while rasping “yeh-yeh-yeh, yeh-yeh-yeh”. It inspires […]
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