Month: January 2024
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Advice that makes sense . . .
I’ve borrowed a clipart image from the blog of fellow Canadian Mobashar Qureshi, who relates that two salient words of advice have kept him going: Keep Writing. Indeed. Through all the tribulations of searching for an agent, hunting down independent publishers, after having ventured into the murky realm of self-publishing on the big platforms (Amazon/KDP), and then…
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As neat as ever you please
Our new builder friend, who’ll be a neighbour just as soon as their own house build starts two doors down, is working with us on a few jobs we’ve been thinking about over these past months while we settle in to our new home. These new patio blocks will, eventually, when we collect enough shekels,…
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Sunset glows after torrential rain . . .
Work has commenced here in our Holmview garden, in a fair few places. The gate that was a barrier has been taken down, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier entry here on my pursuit of joys. The carving out of a place for our new greenhouse is now ongoing (to the left of the decorative pots, in…
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When a gate is not an entrance but a barrier . . .
The strong steel gate in our new-to-us driveway has served primarily as a barrier, to keep the friendly family dogs safely within the garden, over the past year. But it’s also been a barrier, or at least a huge hindrance even when fully open, to convenient entrance and egress by our ancient motorhome, Harry Hymer. And therein…
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Bright sunshiny day . . .
So Monday morning is our regular Men’s Coffee Morning at New Galloway Town Hall, and after finessing yet another file for the cheerful printer, I moseyed along down for a cup of coffee. I’d heard that the big heater in the lesser hall had been repaired (a bust fuse), and so I expected to be warmed…
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The joy of a bound volume . . .
I seem to gravitate to prolonged projects: diaries; novels; long-running blogs; more novels; social histories; even a lengthening set of joys. My personal joy this morning is the completion of one project, and the anticipation of delving into another. The social history project that I devised, some 18 months ago, was to create a lasting, tangible set…
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Sighs of relief . . . it’s fixable!
Our Harry Hymer, beloved classic Hymermobile of 1997 vintage, went in for its MOT last week, and failed. The issue was the accumulating rust around both front jack points, indicated on a 2020 model above. The integrity of the support structure was totally compromised, and it was not at all out of the realm of possibility that…
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Not only, but also . . . looking ahead while looking back
Both perspectives, it seems, are golden: the golden years we may have experienced, and the golden future we might hope to inhabit. Today I’m musing on the simultaneity of the visions; though we often think of looking back at the year gone by, or looking forward to the new year coming, I think I tend to discount…
Roads to Joy 