If you are only here because of the provocative title, the relevant information is about halfway through the post. New Years Eve day I again walked the Compton Road loop and got drenched and did a trial pack of my suitcase. The outlook was not good. Sue and Wendy were still “poorly.” Sue was so  Read the Rest…

Two days after Christmas, Wendy, Sue and I sat in the front room. Wendy was writing thank you notes, Sue was doing something on her phone and I was writing my second batch of Christmas cards and blaming their late departure on the Royal Mail, which was still on strike. Wendy looked up. “I hear  Read the Rest…

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…

Season of mist, mellow fruitfulness and everyone’s favorite Keats poem. There’s nip in the air and a crunch underfoot, apples and cider and nuts in their shells. The world is a-wash in the colors I can’t wear because they wash me out but I get to enjoy them all around me in autumn. Autumn is  Read the Rest…

I’ll begin by saying I am not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. I think they are a set-up. Or a greeting card invention. And I find the first of January arbitrary. Out of curiosity I looked up a history of New Year’s resolutions. They appeared to have begun 4000 years ago with the ancient  Read the Rest…