If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Everyone likes a Christmas mystery. Apparently. They say everyone likes Christmas ghost stories, too, but I’ve never really gone for that one. Anyhow, a mystery. Something, it seems, is digging up the pots on Sal’s decking. It’s been going […]

Bezique is the most convoluted, complicated card game known to humankind. Although, having said that, when you get going it’s not so bad.
Viv taught me. She was taught by my grandmother, and it was my grandmother’s set, with the 50 year old scoring dials, that she used to teach me last night. It was like […]

I’ve barely seen any TV this Christmas, and as a result it’s been one of the best for years. Yesterday - Boxing Day - we drove in convoy down to Sal’s to spend the day at hers. Oscar spent his time alternately stalking her new mouse-topper slippers or lolling around on our laps to warm […]

Christmas day isn’t the best time to set the kitchen on fire. So, don’t put towels on the hob to mop up the spitting steamer. Don’t leave them there when you turn it up to 12.
If you do happen to set them on fire, standard protocol is to run with them into the garden, flames […]

Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!

How times have changed. Tonight, BBC4 has been running a whole series of Fanny Cradock cookery programmes back to back. Never before have I seen such a collection of artificial colours that even the the Tweenies would look sepia stood beside them.
Tonight, in the two episodes I watched, she made a Christmas pudding that looked […]

Cold and foggy and a little bit wet.

En bona fojntrogo anstataux litet’
Ripozis la dolcxa Jesua kapet’:
La steloj rigardis al nuba vual’
Al eta Jesuo dormanta en stal’.
        In a good manger instead of a bed
        Slept the gentle Jesus’ small head
        The stars looked towards the cloudy veil
        To tiny Jesus sleeping in a stable
La bovoj blekadis post taga labor’;
Sed kusxis Jesuo sen plendo aux plor’.
Jesu’, mi […]

The Acad

I wish my fan club would stop following me around at this time of year
What a strange day it was yesterday. My last day of work for the year, yet the first working day of the week so far. It all felt strangely detached. Why did I go in for one day in the middle […]