Category: Musings
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With age, mellowness?
I took a call the other day from an old neighbour. We’d had a falling out over some promotion deal gone wrong, well over a decade ago, and I never expected to hear from him again. And yet there he was, on the other end of the line, chatting away as if . . .…
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Camaraderie in commiseration
It’s not often, we find, that we meet someone who’s had a similar catering experience to the years in the hospitality sector that we’ve had. But yesterday we were privileged to chat with the owner of a local cake shop which had become what she called ‘a destination tea room’ to which people from a…
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Family togetherness . . .
We had a full house over the weekend: blow-up mattress, camping cushions in the living room, and three sets of familiars to accommodate in separate quarters. Kali cat lived in the conservatory from whence she could escape to the great outdoors; growing-up kittens Maui and Leo roamed from lounge to bedroom, enjoying their sequestered eating…
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Vicarious road trip joys
I’m nicking our daughter’s road trip experience for a little bit of vicarious joy this morning. Although the driving hours were on the long side, the joy of zipping through the French countryside, the vineyards, Air BnBs, tiny hotels and auberges, a balconied suite in Monaco and an eventual delightful destination on a remote Tuscan…
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Joys of clearance
Our task today, since it’s damp and dreich outside, probably too wet for hedge trimming, will be to clear out the little porch. This porch has been my own domain, for my DIY tools, my writing space, and my LEGO studio, for the past decade anyway. But now we’re more interested in revealing the glorious…
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Ambivalent joy of a groaning bookshelf
They’re not sorted yet, but three and a half boxes later, the new bookshelf is reaching a groaning capacity now, and there’s still another four or five long shelves in the big house. To say nothing of the boxes I’ve hidden in the loft! It’s hard to downsize the accumulated reading of a lifetime. On…
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Gasps of the past inform the present . . .
So I wasn’t sure I got much out of the writing workshop on Bank Holiday Monday — it felt rather more useful for beginning writers, and of course I fancy myself a bit with three years of writing group under my belt these days. But I was chatting about the day with our beloved neighbour,…
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Real good rain
I read a column the other day decrying our obsession with bright sunny days as ‘good’ . . . and dark rainy ones as, well, as something to be endured. But in this summer of extensive drought, and with climate harbingers sounding ever more doom-laden, real good rain is something to be cheered, surely, the…
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The joy of setting up
Today I get to help out with setting up for a regular weekly function. We’re not really settled in the new village yet, but we’re trying to be quiet helpers. Come winter, when the energy bills will really bite, we’ll probably spend most of our time here in New Galloway, but for now we’re still…
Roads to Joy 