Category: Musings
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Delights of fine dining
It felt like an Instagram moment, right here in our dining kitchen, when our cooperating chefs laid out sushi and prawns, avocado slices interspersed with spring onions over black cod and raw abalone, soft-shell crabs fried in crunchy tempura batter. What a delight, and a fruition of a Christmas voucher! The sushi was enveloped in…
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Sharing joy –> further joy
I could have used any number of icons to illustrate the concept of sharing, of course, but this one struck my fancy. In so many senses, we’re all part of a team, aren’t we? So if I share my joy, and that joy gets shared around with others, well well well, more joy accrues! And…
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Simple tidiness is more than its own reward
I’ve never been the tidiest person, so on the occasion (rare) when I do tidy the place up, and when I sit back and look at the space that’s emerged from a jumble of accumulated stacks of papers, I have to laugh at myself admiring the neatness! That huge expanse of white, upon which my…
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Where do things start?
Sometimes I think that things need to percolate a bit, or maybe it’s more like stewing, but after the simmering, new projects emerge almost as if they’re fully formed. But they have to start somewhere. The current tally of nest boxes around our little smallholding, up on the high fellside of Sparty Lea, is seven…
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Orientations . . .
Everyone knows that the ancients who built Stonehenge orientated it to align with the sunrise at the solstices. Similarly, barrows in Scotland may have a long passageway that is only fully illuminated on one morning of the year. The due diligence of the ancient astronomers who built their calendars so precisely is justly lauded. But…
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Does abundance of ‘choice’ bring joy?
I have to start this piece with the caveat that I do not know the answer to my question. I only have some examples that have stimulated my musing today. The first example comes from our daily Wordle grappling. We sit opposite each other, first thing in the morning, and try to wrestle our minds…
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Or, track of purgatory
When we arrived to take up residence at our smallholding in Sparty Lea, some thirty years ago now, one of the first set of projects we organised was a re-grading and drainage exercise on the long track leading to the house. That work lasted a couple of years before erosion demanded that we do something…
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Persevering with Amelia and Amelio
A by-product of the pandemic lockdown, we grew our little flock from fertilised eggs acquired through the post and hatched in a smart incubator. We now have a breeding pair of Buff Orpingtons, two White Cochin hens, and a harem of three Barnvelder egg-layers watched over by a handsome cockerel. It’s taken a considerable investment…
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Itchy, antsy feet
Our connection for the morning’s ferry was crucial, that day we left North Uist for Harris. We had to dash on up through the Outer Hebrides to Stornoway on Lewis for the second ferry back to the mainland in Ullapool. It was to meet a sad, but not unexpected date for a family funeral. Still,…
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Reaching ‘The Sweet Spot’ through adversity
A professor from Yale University has written a book titled ‘The Sweet Spot,’ so coming along just after I published my own little ‘sweet spot’ poem, his long piece is timely in terms of these Roads To Joy musings. He suggests that it’s only by experiencing pain and suffering that we can find meaning, and…
Roads to Joy 