News from the cottage.

Every body has an opinion. Everybody knows someone who has it. Everybody is doing what they can in their own way. Everybody is living their best Sunday. Unless you’re not. Unless you haven’t got food, or neighbours, or the wherewithal, or the imagination, or the support, or family or friends or youth or the internet … Read more

Blissful thinking

The towels have been in a 60 degree cycle and are now blowing about on the washing line. Magnolia petals are strewn over the lawn, and the newly laid grass seed has been eaten by the little birds pecking away at it. A box of vegan cheeses have arrived, a packet of wire wool and … Read more

Miley Cyrus

My heart is breaking for the lad, who opened a bar in Peckham, put every penny he had into it and then Boom. My heart is breaking for the girl, who taught dance to disadvantaged kids in Rome, saved all her pennies to buy a ticket and then Boom. My heart breaks for the shy … Read more

International Woman’s Day

It was International Woman’s Day today so I fulfilled my duties as a woman in as International a way as possible. I phoned Boston and Saratoga, Chatham and Hackney, Devon and Wales and even pinged a text to Togo. I think that’s pretty International dont you? Having lived with the old git for forty three … Read more

Service with a smile.

Hyacinths and daffodils have taken over the kitchen table. Outside crocuses, primroses and hellebores have bust their buds in honour of spring even though the garden still looks like Le Mans, the Suki dog’s legacy. I await the carpet man. We have had a new bathroom carpet laid, but being an old age pensioner with … Read more

Knee Deep

Last week the wind ripped the bark off the eucalyptus tree and sent it flying all over the garden. A vase blew off the woodshed and shattered into tiny pieces. A trampoline blew onto the railway line between Orpington and Sevenoaks and Waitrose was empty save for me and a few other souls who were … Read more

HEEEELP

It is eighteen minutes past bewitching hour and I have got as much sleep in me as a breeze block So I’ve just watched the ‘Big Hack’, then The Orange Canker putting me into a State of Disunion, during which the very daring Nancy Pelosi tore up pages of lies before our very eyes. And … Read more

Re- unification of GFL.

My feet are freezing. I did my yoga thinking my temperature would rise, but it didn’t. I meditated thinking I could think myself warm, but I didn’t. I laid the fire, hoovered, cleaned the kitchen, drove out for the papers, put on a hoodie and a down-filled gilet, put the heater on full in the … Read more

Fallen Angels

The aubergine and tamarind curry is in a kadhai on top of the stove, a delicious dish from the South of India. From the North I’ve made slow cooked mushrooms, with vegan condensed milk, and from Kerrala the ingredients for rice with peanuts and cashew nuts are waiting to be assembled for 7.00 tomorrow night … Read more

Losers – arn’t we all?

Right now talking doesn’t help. Brexit Schmexit, none of it matters as long as our children weep. Etonian bluster has won the day. Steve Bannon altering the wrong to make it Righter. Conspiracy theories about who paid whom to do whatever they did to keep the status quo chugging along abound. Who knows what’s true … Read more