My own culinary skills, such as they may be, are very limited tightly focused. I know this and can live with it. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever died after eating something I’ve cooked (a prolonged streak of luck that Madame sometimes finds quite baffling), so that’s a result in itself.…
When I finally managed to shift myself and publish a new post recently I think I was fair enough to apportion blame. Which is to say that I claimed it wasn’t all my fault. In particular, I railed against the absence of sufficiently inspiring daily prompts from WordPress – and it was while doing so that…
‘Where have you been?’ you’re almost certainly not wondering. Look, I know it’s been over a month since my last post, but it’s not for the want of trying. Let me assure you, I haven’t been idle. Although not for the want of trying. So here are ten perfectly good reasons – not excuses, oh dear…
My Twitter account is a bit like my bicycle; it’s there, it’s mine alright, but it doesn’t get used much. WordPress is the only reason I signed up to Twitter in the first place, but as I pointed out at the time, since I know hardly anybody else with a Twitter account, its value as…
There’s a bit of a thread going on over at Mollytopia, based on (up to) 100 questions you’ve never been asked. On the principle of never looking a gift horse in the mouth in the constant struggle to come up with something to say on this blog, here are a few (37 to be exact) of my own responses:…
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s good to see you, but on balance I suppose I’m glad that you’re still around – even if you are a grumpy-looking old sod. If I think back to your 1975 iteration, your first as a grown-up, you were a grumpy-looking young sod. In…
Oh WordPress, you shouldn’t have got me started. A recent Daily Prompt asked about punctuation. In particular, it asked ‘do you overuse exclamation marks? Do you avoid semicolons like the plague? What type of punctuation could you never live without?’ Like it says on Wikipedia, punctuation is: “the use of spacing, conventional signs, and certain typographical…
Recently, I was wandering around a French stately home – as one does. According to the brochure, this imposing building has been in the same family for over 500 years, but it seems that it hasn’t always been a private residence. Admittedly, I shouldn’t have been handling the exhibits, but I was intrigued by an old…
From ten years ago, a stark warning of the dangers of leaving home for any length of time… The Unkindest Cut You may not even have noticed – and I wouldn’t pretend or presume that, in the great scheme of things, it makes any difference whether you have or not – but of late there’s not been…
Newer members of the growing expat community here in Faire-Le-Dodo (87) may have been nonplussed by the strange state of suspended animation that our commune appears to have settled into for the past few weeks. Please be reassured, this is perfectly normal. Indeed, the French have a word for it – août. That’s August to…
the only deadhead in the hameau 