When we moved in

We got on with some painting at the weekend. Not the filling a blank canvas type – instead, creating the blank canvas itself. When we moved in, we were desperate to put our stamp on a place of our own. Five years of marriage: renting, saving, waiting for enough job stability to start a mortgage. …

Lit Kid: recurring phrases

I began with openings, and now I’m going onto recurring phrases in children’s books. It’s not my intention to get overly stylistic about it. I have a notebook where I am starting to record ideas for writing about children’s books, and there are (unsurprisingly) many others that could clamour for attention. But a certain amount …

Retirement starts here

A thought struck me today: and I’m going to have a go here at thinking it through. I’m thinking about that later life phase: those (hopefully) special times when we are free of responsibilities (or freer, at least); when availability of time is not an issue. What do people think about doing in retirement? Travel …

A Christmas Carol: Christmas stockings

It’s almost Christmas Eve as I write today’s post. Almost. Almost is close enough to be able to talk about Christmas stockings, isn’t it? === Christmas Past I think the very early days of Christmas stockings were proper long socks. There is a pair of good stout navy socks that my dad had when he was …

A Christmas Carol: pantomime

Time for another Christmassy post. Oh no it isn’t. Oh yes it is… When I started planning out subjects for this month’s posts, pantomime was one that made the list early on. Others will choose to focus their Christmas ‘must dos’ on elves on shelves (or not, depending on this year’s press about it), cookie …