You’ve probably never played Belote. Until two years ago, neither had we. It’s a card game, little played elsewhere but in certain parts of France – like here – almost a way of life. We first encountered it when we were persuaded along to a meeting of the local commune’s ‘Club d’Amitie’, a fortnightly social get-together for retired people. I admit…
It’s all perfectly logical, I suppose. Sixty is the new forty, orange is the new black (although I have no idea what that actually means). Everything is the new something*. At this point you’re probably thinking – assuming you haven’t already clicked away in your restless search for that new cat video – ‘What the hell…
Oh, hi there. I thought that might get your attention… Today’s instalment of ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ is: “Origin story. Why did you start your blog? Is that why you still blog, or has your site gone in a different direction than you’d planned?” It’s coming up for two years since I started this…
“All grown up: When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?” Here’s a Freudian slip for you: when I first typed the writing prompt above, I wrote ‘last’ instead of ‘first’. Which maybe tells you that I don’t feel ‘grown up’ very often. Close advisers have told me that…
“…Are you living happily ever after?…” How appropriate that today’s ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ should be on this particular topic. Because today is a significant birthday for Sugar Magnolia. She is eighteen again, of course. Just as she was back in 1972, when this tongue-tied, but already besotted, scruff plucked up the courage to ask…
My Countdown To An Event app – which is now functioning as a Countup – tells me that, as of 2 p.m. European Summer Time on September 27th, I have been retired for exactly one year. Not that I’d forgotten. It’s interesting to compare my daily timetable now with what it looked like twelve months…
“A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare” – W H Davies: ‘Leisure’ Last week’s ‘Friday Faves’ on WordPress set me thinking, as it highlighted three blog posts on the broad theme of the guilt that is all too often associated with not being ‘busy’ (or at least…
“If all you got to live for is what you’ve left behind, get yourself a powder charge and seal that silver mine” – Grateful Dead: ‘Mississippi Halfstep Uptown Toodeloo’ It’s pure coincidence that the calendar year is about to turn, just as three months have passed since I retired. Although I am not by nature…
the only deadhead in the hameau 