This post is dedicated to Nico van Loenen, who died on Wednesday. Nico and his family lived two doors up from us when I was at secondary school. Our families became friends soon after we moved to Malvern. Nico and my dad would hang out together on Tuesdays, when I, my mum and Nico’s wife …
Author archives: alison
Of peas and soup
Fog has set in today, thickening by the minute as I ate my breakfast banana. (Yes, I also do brunch bananas, and other alliterative fruit.) This was really just a chance to write about fog, or ‘pea soupers’ as they were called in London in the 19th century. Given all the pollution then, a fog …
Perez de Kailyard
We’re told that inspiration strikes in unlikely places. So today, while hanging up the washing, came up with a new pun on the former UN Secretary General. I thought it could come in useful for someone who is trying to be very diplomatic, and has big intentions, but is limited to operating in (rural?) Scotland. …
Zywiec rules!
This is by way of some catch up from our holiday in Poland – various ideas for blog posts at the time. For the uninitiated, I spent two chunks of time in Poland: six months in my gap year, working on the outskirts of Warsaw in a school for the blind; then ten months teaching …
Taking the plunge
All of a sudden, quite a lot of new stuff coming up all at the same time… I’ve been on the singing team at church for quite a while – not bad as a way to be involved, and more creative than cleaning the loos. (If you’ve come up with a creative way of cleaning …