One of the most difficult things about lockdown has not being able to visit my 93 year old mother. She is 94 next week and, because I am now allowed to officially sit in her back garden or at the opposite end of a shared park bench, I will use my virtual ‘half term’ to…
Wear or tear?
I have written before about kintsugi, but since I am good at breaking things, and because I feel we are going through a time of repair, I have decided to revisit the topic. Likewise, a lot of things have been revisited during lockdown, so I might write about that as well. The traditional Japanese art of…
Dusty Bluebells
I might have mentioned my lack of garden quite a lot lately. Sorry. I try and rein in the self pity but it is so evident that my little green eye is vexed by anyone who has a small patch of land in which to see out their ‘Stay Home’. It is not the lack…
Listless Zooming?
Have I ever declared to you that I am a list person? Well I am, big time. I write lists all over the place to keep my menopausal brain limbered up and so that I can go to bed feeling I have achieved something. Pathetic I know. I even write things on a list that…
Hairy Stories
Thanks to your steady stream of blog fodder, I realise that Corona is impacting the community in hair raising ways. It is almost as if Trump and Boris got a head start on us; short hair clearly has no place in politics. I feel smug about this. My father’s gene pool gifted me a thick…
Turf Wars
‘Am I the only person in conflict because the garden (normally ignored) has become a domain that others want to exert influence over?’ writes Oldest Friend (OF) in the comments section of last week’s blog. I can only thank her for answering my plea for ideas to fill my barren Corona blog phase. Love OF…
And so it goes
My reliance on shameless ear-wigging to provide content for this weekly blog is presenting a challenge. Fascinating though I find my own internal wittering, there is definitely a drought in terms of ‘new’ material. I fully appreciate that globally we have far more pressing issues to contend with, but if you do have time on…
Loyalty in Corona Language
I am an English teacher as you know, so once I absorb the shock of each day’s new Corona headlines, my guilty secret is a fascination in our ability to quickly forge new words and sayings to deal with this pandemic – words and phrases that we didn’t have a few weeks ago. I take…
It’s a lock in
When I was at university, a ‘lock in’ was something to enjoy. In the 1980’s (prehistoric story coming up) Aberystwyth was still dry on a Sunday, so if you were invited to a ‘lock in’ at a hostelry before midnight on a Saturday, you were in for a very good weekend. This week, lock down,…
Every day’s a school day …
This particular week in teaching is summed up nicely in a thank you message from one of our Year 11 students, ‘I hope you stay safe in these uncertain times’: Student turns teacher – we weren’t needed after all. Perhaps young people don’t need a clutch of exam certificates if they can show such empathy…
