This week I have been painting fences. We share a boundary with no fewer than six neighbours, and all of those fences need a lick of paint. They have been neglected long enough; if we leave it any longer they will become warped, or worse, broken. It takes me about five minutes to change into […]
Over the weekend, a friend asked me what my children’s ethnic heritage is. (Answer: complicated.) When I mentioned this conversation to my six year old son, he soberly answered, “Human.” We nodded at his sagacity, but he very quickly followed up with, “No! I mean the culprit. I’m the culprit.” Interesting, not just for vocabulary […]
I’ve been clearing out my suits. Recently I went through our wardrobes, pulling out the things I will never wear again (neon orange sweater? Why?) or that no longer fit (goodbye Levi’s 501s; hello elasticated waists) (Sigh). I took a good, long look at the various suits I used to wear to work and decided […]
“Kee!” I heard it, thought: “buzzard,” and accordingly lifted my head to see it. There it was: a tail like a tomahawk, light patches on the undersides of its broad wings. Gliding through the cloudless sky in the way that buzzards so often do. I thought, “It can see the big picture.” One morning […]
The first hour after waking is beautiful. The nights and mornings are drawing in, so as my eyelids flutter open at 6am (no alarm clock or child required these days, strangely), I see only the crepuscular semi-haze of dawn peeking from beneath my curtains. As autumn arrives, each dawn is darker than the one before. […]
Every time I unfurl my Yoga mat or try to sit in quiet meditation it’s the same thing: cra cra cra cra craaaaaaa! While we were away on holiday, the seagulls that nest nearby welcomed a new baby. That baby is helpless and needy and EVERYWHERE. Its call is plaintive, persistent, repetitive. At 4 one […]
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