Features of the landscape

As you probably know, since last March, we walk twice a week in the Surrey Hills. During our walks, we come upon various manmade or topographical features. There are many sudden deep hollows in the land, which I can imagine might be ‘sink holes’ from a...

The ‘recyclers’ of the plant world

Fungi are a fascinating group of subjects. Different from all other plants and so varied in their forms, colours and sizes. I know very little about them, although being vegetarian I am very fond of mushrooms! On our walks on the Surrey Hills we have seen such a...

New ventures

I think I have mentioned that I was in Venice in January 2020. Oh my goodness, I am absolutely longing to go back – it seems such a very long time ago! One of the brilliant things I’ve been doing in lockdown is to learn a new skill in photography, so I...

Time to talk about Aunts

Prompted by a cousin’s feedback on the grape hyacinths newsletter, asking for more on my mother, I thought it must be time for another family chapter. If you’re a Wodehouse fan like me, you’ll know that Bertie Wooster has two Aunts. One, Aunt Agatha,...

Chapter 3 – learning to read

I mentioned school in an earlier blog, and thought I might tell you about how I learned to read. My brother is a little bit older than me and one day, when I was 3 years old, he sat me down and allegedly said “I’d better teach you to read, because once you...

The King and I!

I’m sure that 99% of people reading this are too young to remember the musical “The King and I”, which was definitely a popular one when I was young. It has a delightful song called ‘Getting to know you’ and so I’m using that as a...

Blue Monday – January 18th

So what’s this all about – Blue Monday? I think it has been given this name as a result of being midwinter, gloomy and short days, and coinciding with the time when the bills for Christmas come in, and the credit cards are due to be paid. I know that for...