The Professor has reappeared from his complicated travels, having contrived to touch down in Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland in the course of the last 36 hours. It all seems to have gone very well, and many strange and wonderful things have been seen. He’s brought back some of the proper flour for soda bread, […]
For the first time that I’ve noticed, we have crows nesting in the tall beeches by the lake. I really don’t think it can have happened before. Given that the ground is covered with white spots, and the nestlings are making the most extraordinary variety of prehistoric-sounding noises, I’m fairly sure I would […]
Miss Kit has been a little down, off her food, inclined to heave. I suddenly realised that despite the return of inclement weather (it hailed today) it is in fact, or at least in broad theory, spring. Therefore the little animal is moulting. She attends to her short, sleek, shiny coat herself most of the […]
The Northern Professor has gone on his travels, some business in Manchester, then off to Ireland, and I am personing the Home Front in company with Miss Kit and Miss Best Friend for the next ten days. Which means that everything done off the premises takes a certain amount of organization, but fortunately since I’m […]
In case anyone’s wondering, despite volcanic dust blowing over Northern Scotland, the skies are not as yet looking like the Last Days of Pompeii, though we have been promised some spectacular sunsets (this evening’s wasn’t up to much). So no news there, really. However, we can report progress on another front. The old dog has […]
Yesterday a good deal of future magnificence was put in train, in the superficially unappealing form of begonia and dahlia tubers. I have planted twenty-one begonias in seven pots, which will be quite a sight when they do their stuff, and potted up dahlias to get an early start in the greenhouse. […]
The Real World Consultant and Arts Consultant came by for an Easter visit, discombobulating us mildly since we’ve entered a phase of things where one day is really much the same as the next, viz. locked in combat with a book, or rather, our respective books, and haven’t been paying attention. Not to say it […]
I had reason recently to reflect on the development of Sensibility. In the late eighteenth century, it might manifest in one of three forms. 1) tears (copious, and common to both genders; the truly Sensible could be reduced to wringing out their hankies by the spectacle of a really good waterfall). 2) fainting, 3) going […]