I know I stick rigidly to my Monday message because I’m a stickler for my diary and organisation. I can’t help it – it’s just who I am. But speaking of diaries and dates, there’s something a bit more pressing right now… And that’s calendars. I’ll be honest, there’s days when I’m not even sure […]
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Now, I’m as partial to a glass of fizz as anyone – but English sparkling? Delicious though it is, it’s got a few too many zeros on the end for me. Although if a generous host happens to press a glass or two on me, I’m not refusing! So, when a catalogue dropped through the […]
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For most of us, the holidays are over. Come rain or shine we’ve hit the road and explored the highways and byways of our beautiful countryside like we’ve never done before. The more intrepid have braved flights to foreign lands suffering the anguished 11th hour “will we”, “won’t we go”, verdicts determined by the travel […]
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To an expert, Sudoku is a mildly testing brain workout. To a beginner, it’s a devilishly testing unfathomable puzzle. But to all its devotees it’s like a highly addictive narcotic. Once you’ve had your first fix, you’re hooked. Historians believe that it originated in India or China in around 900AD, but it was the genius […]
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The heatwave’s coming back! Well, supposedly… A sunny Bank Holiday weekend would be the PERFECT way to end the summer – so, if anyone starts to talk about Christmas… you might want to reach for the smelling salts. Why do I mention Christmas, I hear you ask? Because the first signs of it are already […]
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If I’d have succumbed to every takeaway promotion during lockdown, I’d have a waistline something close to the circumference of the London Eye. Thankfully, I didn’t, and I don’t. But it’s been hard. Takeaway meals from local pubs and restaurants were one of the great success stories of the pandemic and showed how the more […]
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A good racing camel can reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. And watching one close-up in full flight is an unnerving experience. Poetry in motion they are not. Sitting atop one of nature’s more ungainly creatures as it breaks the speed limit must be rather like a ride on Oblivion at Alton […]
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Let’s be honest, we’ve all done it. With too much to do and not enough time to do it that webinar you signed up for bites the dust. It sounded interesting at the time but right now it feels as attractive as sawing off your right foot. You send your apologies saying that unfortunately, you […]
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All I had to do was put up some fencing around a Scots Pine tree … And I’d made a bit of a Horlicks of it. If a fencing contractor has seen it, they’d have probably burst out laughing. But that’s without reckoning on Tenzing Norgay – also known as my better three-quarter’s goat which, […]
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For most of us, the loo is a wonderful refuge from life’s struggles. Once we’re locked in, all the horrors of the world are safely locked out … or so we like to think. That’s certainly what Walter Erhart from Graz in Austria thought recently as he settled down for the luxurious experience of one […]
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