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 […]
Tag Archives: Gwen
2026 Ahem
MUSKETS SHRIFT RAPT: April 2026
Ahem Alli and I were up and early on Good Friday to be driven with [...]
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30
Apr
Apr
Professional Writing Writing
They awoke…
The hidden past of the bisexual pronoun Those of all political and cultural persuasions [...]
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2026 Ahem
BABY FAIRYLAND TWITTEN: March 2026
Ahem I was about to open a pile of birthday cards when I was encouraged [...]
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30
Mar
Mar
2026 Ahem
QUOTIDIAN HAMMERHEAD HIPPO: February 2026
Ahem Rain and colder weather in southern England dominated the first few days of the [...]
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02
Mar
Mar
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
01
Jan
Jan
Ahem No sooner had Gwen arrived back from York than we drove together to the supermarket for her to buy tons of sugar, vegan butter, chocolate, and other ingredients to add to the loads she had already brought to bake her vegan chocolate brownies. Her first days here were spent in labour-intensive and kitchen-hogging mixing, […]
01
Sep
Sep
Ahem Fresh blackberries were aplenty (try saying that five times very quickly) in the fields around the house; sweet and edible at least three weeks earlier in the month in mid-Sussex than I recall even thirty years ago in Oxfordshire. The best flavoured blackberries are nudged, not pushed nor pulled, off their stalks. Our tomatoes […]
01
Jul
Jul
Ahem We have seen our daughters together thrice this month, the first time with their partners Jurrat and Sam, when Alli, Gwen and I drove to meet them all in Tooting Bec Common in south London. Relaxed, informal, friendly, the tooting common welcomed us to a spot near the shade of an oak tree at […]
01
Jun
Jun
Ahem Jessie’s 29th birthday was celebrated on Europe Day with great success and aplomb. The 9th May is a very ‘international’ and upbeat day. It also celebrates 25 years of Austria in the European Union, 70 years since the Schuman Declaration, 75 years of the United Nations, the 250th birthday of Beethoven, and national windmill […]
31
Jan
Jan
Ahem I have spent the month picking up bits and pieces in all sorts of ways and means. I have visited the capital often, first to pick up a suitcase of clothes that Guy from the Muppets brought over from Abidjan. I talked with Mike about writing and editing articles on Africa, then started working […]
Ahem We are only now coming to the end of the drawn-out hassle of moving in. It is a slow but occasionally satisfying process of stops and starts, twists and turns, square pegs and round holes. When we got back after a nightmare 12-hour journey to Basel from our house in France in early August […]