The Professor’s dear and greatly valued collaborator on Southwell and related issues sent us a most wonderful present — a glittering heap of thirty-odd small, unset tourmalines, pink, green, and indeterminate colours in between. They had belonged to her Aberdonian grandmother, so they are memory things for her, the kind of thing a child would […]
When the Northern Professor was in Exeter with the Martyrologist, they visited a Benedictine monastery which, like most such, had a little shop selling items made by Benedictines. Among the loot with which he returned was a bag of biscuits made by some French Benedictine nuns, which he liked so much we decided to try […]
It rained and rained, and then it rained some more. The day’s various endeavours were punctuated by increasingly anxious episodes with Miss Kit, who asked to go out, looked at the rain, and wouldn’t. Nor, as a matter of policy, will she use her tray. Eventually, in mid afternoon, as it slowed to a drizzle, […]
We have been rejoicing in the snowdrops for about a month, but ungratefully, we began to look forward to something that wasn’t white, and in the last few days it has started to happen at last. The crocus were the first to oblige — the bank beneath the beech tree, the sunniest spot in the […]
I spoke too soon, in the last blog, in suggesting that removing the patches removed the problem between me and Miss Kit. She no longer considers me some kind of sinister replicant — indeed, for the last week, she has been attempting to spend an unfeasible amount of the day roosting in my arms […]
Unfortunately, in the course of my Oxford sojourn, I also filled up — not with snow, in any direct sense, but with catarrh. It is all rather tiresome; the snow has gone, the crocuses are out in the garden, and I am sitting upstairs coughing rhythmically. On my return to the old homestead I dived […]
I started this morning in Oxford, in an attic room overlooking the Warden’s lodging of one of the older colleges. It was an early start (for me) because breakfast was at eight; on pulling back the curtains I saw the Warden’s garden a sheet of white. Because it was also very still, every twig on […]
‘I’m on a train’ — as someone with a mobile always seems to yell sooner or later. Just pulling into Leuchars as I write — at least I’m doing my yelling quietly. This is our new alternative theory of getting to London: since air travel gets ever nastier, more expensive and takes longer, resign […]
After having had such a week of sadness, we permitted the Apparitional Gamekeeper to hire a dumper truck — having, the week previously, bought him a new and more powerful chain-saw. In consequence of the one and teh other, there has been mighty logging; to the extent that the chain saw has already required a […]