So Happy New Year! Kathleen Hall I have been relieved to see that other writers experienced a post-holiday slump, too At least two newsletters I subscribe to have written about it. However, my slump is like crossing the Sahara: thirst without finding an oasis. Ideas to write about abound, but seat to chair has eluded… Continue reading It’s still January!!
Category: Food
Winter Cooking
Okay. So I haven't written about food, or much of anything else, for a long time. But days and days of dreary, rainy weather, short days with dim light for the studio, have driven me inside again. And what better on these wintry days than my cozy old kitchen, whose stones hold molecules of meals… Continue reading Winter Cooking
Art Class in Albury
Wednesday mornings I go to a painting class in the nearby village of Albury. Our teacher lives off Rectory Lane just down the road in Shere. I’m not feeling much like a painter, today. Well, yes, a painter, but rather of walls than of canvas. The thing is, this man is really teaching us to… Continue reading Art Class in Albury
Hoar Frost
Sorry to go on and on about the weather. It’s just so variable here in England, but just now, invariably cold. I’ve never lived anyplace with 0C temperatures or less for more than a weekend skiing. We have our two wood fires going, as well as the central heating, which I like, but Bernard likes… Continue reading Hoar Frost
Socializing and Studios
Parties, parties, parties: on Wednesday, at Anne’s, we met two new (to us) Shere couples, a striking woman with gray hair cut in a brush style, and her Danish/British husband whom she met through a newspaper ad. The wife has lived in Shere for a long time, and knows everything about everybody. Can’t wait to… Continue reading Socializing and Studios
More North – June, 2008
Although we spent a night in so-so hotel near a village called Cranster, and had a good meal of fresh fish beside the North Sea, it was really only a stopover on our way to the Yorkshire Dales, another high point of our trip. As we traveled into Yorkshire, the countryside became spare, sheep fields… Continue reading More North – June, 2008
FORAGING —
It isn’t the cost of vegetables and fruits which periodically sends me scampering to the fields and woods to scout for wild food. It’s the self-sufficiency of it. It’s about reaching back through generations to glimpse my ancestors, to experience an instinct going back to human beginnings, and to relate to the universal need to… Continue reading FORAGING —
FAGGOTS
I had faggots for lunch yesterday. Two round, dark brown balls appeared from the pub’s kitchen, nestled in a soft bed of mashed potatoes. No, don’t be vile. Not testes, and not made from bundles of wood or of anything else, except liver, ground and spiced. I looked up the word in my Collins English… Continue reading FAGGOTS
York minster and Belford
The sun shone on the morning we went to see the Minster. I wondered why York Minster is called a Minster instead of a Cathedral, so I looked it up on Wictionary and in the Dictionary, but there isn’t an answer in either place. It’s just a Big Church, the same as for the cathedrals. … Continue reading York minster and Belford
York
We find our hotel, The Minster, with no trouble. An alleyway off the main road leads to a parking area, and we roll our bags up the slight incline to enter a warren of twisting and turning corridors to find our rooms. They are clean, comfortable and adequate, but not more; the hotel looks like… Continue reading York