Tears and white knuckles in La Suisse Normande. One of the advantages of being retired is that an unexpected opportunity to travel can be indulged without consequences. Halfway down a third or fourth bottle of wine last year, we had agreed, apparently, to accompany Former Colleagues, M and B on a trip to Normandy. When the subject came up again and firm proposals were being made this year, also at the third or fourth bottle mark, even a smooth verbal…
Slab laying for the only modestly competent: an incomplete guide. Wandering around the garden I often spot something that starts to annoy me. The garden contains many things that could be improved and normally my reaction is to shrug and mentally add the defect, whatever it is, to the long list of “things I ought to do one day”. Sometimes a job will be brought more vigorously to my attention when it happens to coincide with Long Suffering Wife’s complementary lists of…
Banned from the Metropole! We have been barred from the Metropole! There is a wonderful apartment in Whitby, right on the cliff edge overlooking the beach and the harbour. It is spacious, well equipped and very warm despite its very exposed position. It also has a red stain on the carpet in the hall which was not there before we arrived.
Cooking for blokes. Every now and then, if it is raining so we cannot get out in the garden and Long Suffering Wife has exhausted her list of things that need doing round the house, I get the urge to be creative and cook something. More specifically, I feel the need to make a batch of soup, an endeavour tolerated by L.S.W. with various caveats - that I must not use the wotzit pan, use…
Murder most fowl! I have just witnessed a brutal murder. It happened in the garden right in front of us. This is the perpetrator, but the guilt is mine
Glenrothes: the graveyard of dreams. Last night I dreamt I went to Glenrothes again. I have always disliked Glenrothes. It is not in the infinity of confusing roundabouts that take you from one side of the town to the other without ever arriving anywhere that my animosity lies, and don’t even think of venturing off the main roads into one of the estates, you could be there for days, endlessly circulating. No. It is the memory of…