For my siblings. Fifty years ago our family moved house. The council-owned one we lived in was due to be renovated and the work couldn’t be done while we were in it, so we had no choice. Mum and Dad weren’t unhappy about the move, having been ‘on the list’ for a larger house for […]
Tag: Family
Mis-steak-en
A couple of weeks ago a friend mentioned she was cooking a piece of brisket for dinner. I’d never cooked brisket, although I knew it was a cut that required long, slow, cooking, and had seen a recipe that I fancied trying so I dug it out and went shopping. Traditionally, such meats are the […]
Goodbye 2024
A lot of people are glad to see the back of 2024, with a feeling that 2025 can only be better. I don’t want to bring the mood down but I remember similar comments at the end of 2020; I hope this optimism is better rewarded. I had to pause to think about my own […]
Green-Fingered
My mum always said that her fingers were as green as they looked. Despite her best efforts (and the chivvying of her husband and children to do the same) our family garden looked, at best, tidy, at worst overgrown and weedy. Her gardening DNA strand runs through me like a buttercup root runs through a […]
Doggy Tales
The other day I walked my friend Estelle’s dog. It’s something I’ve done on occasion when she has been unable to, and it’s something I enjoy, both because I like walking and because Ruby, a black labradoodle, is one of the most well-behaved dogs I’ve ever known. Everyone on the street knows Ruby, and everyone […]
Tales of Old
This is a wooden spoon. As statements go it’s not that revelatory; unless your eyesight is impaired you can see it’s a wooden spoon. To be specific, it’s a broken wooden spoon, an end achieved when I smacked the bottom of a pan with it, something I often do and, in the case of this […]
Lockdown: Day 17
Years ago, working for a bank, I was helping a lady open a bank account for the first time in her life. She was obviously out of place, looked nervous and awkward, and only doing it because her husband’s employers, as most were in the late eighties, moving to payroll rather than cash. When I […]
Lockdown: Day 3
When you make the choice to live twelve thousand miles away from your family there’s every chance that you leave someone after a visit knowing you may never see them again. Yesterday we received the sad news that this lady, Esther (Ettie) Annenberg, Neil’s Nan had died. She was 111. I heard some sharp intakes […]
Happy Birthday Mum
It would have been my mum’s birthday last week. It’s over a decade since she left us – sometimes it feels like she’s been gone forever, sometimes it feels painfully close. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not weeping into my tea or tearing my clothes or anything, it’s just that I often see something that […]
Tracy Annenberg 