I have no idea who would have put them there, nor why, but I found these strings of conkers looped around the railway fence when I went for a walk the other day.
They reminded me of my first visit to my brother’s house many, many years ago, where I found a collection of desiccated rabbits’ feet nailed to the shed door. I asked about them as I’d been told that Sammy the cat was a holy terror and I wondered whether it was a shrine to his hunting prowess.
Continue reading “leave well alone”
When I left the house in Spain, I had to pack up all my books and put them in storage. I don’t know how many there were but, around twenty years earlier, fifteen boxfuls had followed me from the UK to Madrid. I’ve never been one for reading and abandoning a book, so in the intervening period the number may well have doubled. Perhaps one day I’ll be re-united with them.
Since arriving back in the UK, I’ve tried to be reasonable about acquiring more as I simply don’t have the space. But for some reason, I like to own what I have read and my few bookcases are full to capacity.
Continue reading “dirty habits”
One of the things I dislike most about this time of year is the fact that news sites are full of articles of highlights and honours, of lists of the best, the most read, the most popular…
To be honest, I mostly don’t care.
Even so, I am very tempted to do a ‘review of the year’ as my last post of 2018.
Continue reading “cat tale at the tail end of the year”
The other day – well, Christmas Day, to be more precise – I wrote a post with poems about sleeping.
That post nearly didn’t make it through to publication, though, as I realised I’d made a stupid mistake when I decided on the title: since restive was entirely the wrong word, I came close to abandoning the whole thing.
Then I considered re-thinking things and using the title cat napping to post the same poems with a different set of photos.
Continue reading “cat napping”
“Spring forward; Fall back.” – the mnemonic my father taught me to remember which way the clocks needed to be altered at the beginning and end of British Summer Time.
Fall back is also one of those marvellous English phrasal verbs – known by many EFL students as “frazzle” verbs, presumably because of the effect on the mind of trying to memorise them – where a main verb is combined with a particle (adverb, preposition, or both).
Continue reading “fall back”
don't confuse the narrator 