Christmas and Boxing Day were over and the next day was a bank holiday because Christmas had been on a Sunday, which cheated people of that extra day off work. Wendy and Sue, feeling worse than poorly, could finally collapse. I had wondered since I first sat in their surround-sound coughing,  why was I not  Read the Rest…

Christmas morning, I woke up early and lay in bed for a long time, wondering if Wendy and Sue were ever going to stir. Sue and I had gotten a bit shirty (defined as throwing your toys out of the pram) about when we would do gifts. Just a bit. I come from a tradition  Read the Rest…

Two days before Christmas began the long slide into what would be Christmas Day. I again went for a long walk in the morning. This time I took the long way to the Farm Shop. I started at Wendy and Sue’s house on Chapel Lane, walked to the top of the High St, crossed the  Read the Rest…

The morning of the Solstice I combined a walk with a quest to find the farm shop, which Wendy and Sue had been telling me about for years and which I couldn’t wait to see. As I was leaving, Wendy said to me, “Now do you have a picture in your mind of how to  Read the Rest…

From the Castle Cary train station, we “did a shop” in Street (that’s a town.) It seems to me that we “did a shop” almost every other day. And the washing machine was going 24/7—more about that later. On that first day, Sue took me around Clark’s Village, an outlet mall built on the site  Read the Rest…

When I told people I was spending Christmas with my cousins in an English village, I heard a fair amount of “that sounds magical.” I don’t think my cousins think of themselves as magical even if they do live in a place with things like fairy soap, fairy lights and fairy cakes        Read the Rest…

There are two Marks and Spencers in all of Cornwall; we stopped at the one in St Ives to get whatever we might need for the last evening of the holiday. We had to choose food for two meals, use the toilets and have tea in the café– one always has tea in the café  Read the Rest…

Covid-19 (and my own laziness) has interrupted my travelogue of last September’s UK adventures.  I’d been a week on Islay in Scotland, then drove with my cousins in Somerset to Morvah, Cornwall.  It seems a very long time ago and it has done me good to revisit my journal and remember. Here is installment thirteen:  Read the Rest…

Still at Zennor ( see previous post) we had lunch at the Old Chapel Café. I discovered Cornish crab, which I afterwards ordered every chance I got. As we were leaving I got engrossed in seeing how an old iron ship part functioned as a doorstop. I pulled it away and watched the door swing  Read the Rest…

Our Celtic Spirituality Morning gave way to lunch at The Cook Book in St Just. Once a bookshop/café, now it’s a café with books for décor. I ordered a plated salad after it was explained to me that a plated salad is salad on a plate. I had an image of latticed and braided vegetables  Read the Rest…