I’ve never seen sprouts sold like this in Spain, so had to take a photo when I went shopping in the local market with my mother, back in the UK, last week. 
Veg Box Recipes (no relation!) have this to say on the subject of this, perhaps the most traditional of Christmas vegetables:
The Brussels Sprout was originally cultivated in Belgium (hence the name) from cabbages. Generations of school children are still lamenting that event…
on a foreign shore: icing-tipped waves
toss tinsel into the clear air. We play
at Wenceslas in the sand, taking it in turns
to be the page. We look for sea holly and sing
carols under the curious gaze
of a parrot in a palm tree.
When the family went on holiday when I was a child, my parents always took books with us so we could identify the birds and flowers we saw in the different parts of the UK.
I’ve been visiting my mother this week, which I suppose counts as being “on holiday”, and she still has the same books. Not that we needed them to make a list of the birds we’ve seen from the lounge window while I’ve been here:
Continue reading “old habits”
Yesterday was the solstice, the shortest day, and, officially, the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere.
When I get back to the village, maybe we’ll burn a yule log to encourage the sun to return.
I haven’t been following the X-factor/Rage Against the Machine story, but it’s one of those things that filter through even if you aren’t the least bit interested in it, and the headlines this morning make it unmissable.
Even so, the only real interest I have in the story is that it’s triggered a memory of being asked by a Swedish friend’s son, back in the early Nineties, what Rage Against the Machine meant.
Continue reading “all the rage”
don't confuse the narrator 