I lived for many years in Spain and I don’t remember ever having a discussion about potatoes. In the UK, though, I’ve discovered that they are a perfectly valid topic for conversation.
Back in the day, there was a joke about the girl potato whose father forbade her to marry Eamonn Andrews – presenter of Sports Report on BBC’s Light Programme – because he was “only a commentator.”
Continue reading “the joy of spuds”
I’ve been thinking about Lady Mondegreen again this week. And also about music lessons, elocution, and other after-school classes from my childhood.
When I was a little girl, like so many little girls of my generation I wanted to be a ballerina. My best friend at school had ballet lessons but, for some reason, my parents decided to send me to piano lessons, instead.
Continue reading “not what it sounds like”
I spent this afternoon in a sound studio, taking part in a radio show that centres around local writers and writing. Today the subject was living with animals and, as the only studio guest, I had the chance to read some of my work and talk a little bit about it.
Anyone who reads this blog must realise that I care about nature – animals, birds and plants – even if the photos of flowers are usually better than my attempts to shoot a moving target, which animals so often are.
Continue reading “genre shifting”
Finding a broken bicycle chain in the street today sent my mind spinning back into the past, when, many, many years ago I was employed through a temp agency during the Easter vacation to work in the Toy Division office at the TI Raleigh factory.
It was my first job and I enjoyed it so much that I was delighted to go back in the summer, this time employed directly by the company. It was only a holiday job, so I can’t really have worked there very long, particularly as there would have been a “factory fortnight” in August. It’s surprising, then, just how many thoughts and memories that chain has triggered.
Continue reading “links to the past”
Even someone who cares as little about cars as I do couldn’t walk past the Rolls Royce parked in town the other day without stopping to look closer. It wasn’t the car that interested me, though: it was the emblem – or, as Wikipedia would have it, the bonnet ornament.
I don’t think I’d ever really thought about what the figure represented; I’d just assumed it was a winged victory. But now I come to do some research, I find it’s actually the Spirit of Ecstasy.
Continue reading “ecstatic thoughts”
don't confuse the narrator 