Category: Uncategorized

So, I’m half way through watching Russell T. Davies’s Casanova, which has rock’n’roll sensibilities (think: A Knight’s Tale) without being jarringly anachronistic (I think), lush historical costumes, and David Tennant. I can highly recommend it, or at least the first part, which made me laugh and cry at different times. Out of curiosity I started… Continue reading Casanova and Book Lust

Is it a problem that, after spending two hours (TWO HOURS!) standing in corridors of an old industrial plant, now repurposed to hold airblowers noisily filling bouncy castles, and craft rooms, and rooms that can push synthetic pizza and nasty cake on children, talking to other perfectly nice parents, and listening in horror to others… Continue reading Birthday Parties: A Necessary Evil

My sister, on seeing pictures of our clutter neatly arranged on shelves in the basement, was lamenting her own lack of basement. K suggested giving her husband a pick-axe and a miner’s helmet, which made her yelp with horror, because her husband is exactly the kind of guy who would grin and go for it.… Continue reading Frank

(Fancifully written for my 100Words exercise.) The trees were bare but in her hands she held a summer’s bounty: plump grapes, red-ripe tomatoes, dreams of raspberries, towering spikes of foxglove and ipomopsis. A carpet of alyssum, creeping phlox and sky blue petunias spread in her mind from the shivering cherry blossom to the corner of… Continue reading The Seed Catalogues Have Arrived

Woo-hoo! I finished up a short story this morning. (Thank you, G for sleeping in). I started it on Saturday when things were calm, and I finished it this morning. The idea came from a conversation in the car, one that made me laugh. And the story is 1000 words: about as much as it… Continue reading Finished Story

K and I are alone enjoying five minutes of mellowness before K rushes off to shower and I rouse A and the whole treadmill starts again (speaking of which I should hook up the treadmill). I’m not as depressed as I thought I’d be (yet). Today seems new and shiny and different. I have things… Continue reading First Day Back

So, Kev’s gone back to work. Angus is at school. Gregor’s still in bed. And I have my brain to myself. I have really enjoyed Kev being here all the time. I wonder if that is sufficient motivation for me to write that best-seller? And is that ever the proper motivation? Well, maybe not for… Continue reading Motivation

Obama? I’m glad he won. I’d love to see him become president, although I think it might kill him (he seems too nice and too principled. And also half-black. Now that I think about it, it might literally kill him. I don’t know that this country of gun-toters has moved past assassination as a form… Continue reading On the Caucuses

Zencuppa posted this meme and although it’s so US-based as to not necessarily apply to me, I’m trying it anyway. I have been struck by how much more affluent the people I’ve met here seem compared to most people I knew growing up in the UK. This might help me see if that idea holds… Continue reading Affluence Meme

The Colonial is holding a benefit on Burns’ Night (my town recently embraced the Celtic way, after a kilt shop moved to town and alerted everyone to the fact that Scots know how to party. We don’t look like it, but believe me, we do!). It features a local distillery expert, the proprietor of the… Continue reading Whiskey, Cheese and Chocolate