Richard Skinner from Allenheads was stimulated by my musings on crockery in an earlier diary piece, to pursue a developing story that began for him when he and Barbara met Dick and Hilary Dorward during a holiday last year in…
Category: Anecdote
Poetry: Practice of Life
It’s often said that, like acting, you have to live in order to be able to write. I loved poetry in my youth, but then decided I needed a lot more living to be able to appreciate it. In fact,…
Cock Robin
While I was writing up some of the text for the little photo album we’ve been creating for our grandsons, Carrie shared a nursery rhyme with me that she learned as a child. No doubt older readers will remember the…
Jake the donkey
There’s not a lot to say about Jake, who lives next door, and sometimes gets out into the field behind us, except that he’s been adopted from his previous home in the hills above Wooley, and he has the normal…
Grapes of delight
Not something one usually associates with the bleak North Pennines, grapes can be grown in south-facing polytunnels, as long as the fermenter (us!) doesn’t depend solely on the natural sweetness of the fruit, but is prepared to add in extra…
A word about crockery
Many of us, perhaps especially on the male side of the gender balance, are happy to eat our meals on whatever holds the food conveniently. Utilitarianism is sort of our middle name. But there’s an aesthetic to eating socially that’s…
Free heat from the sun
It might look a bit (well, more than a bit) ramshackle, but the little shed we’ve made to house the hot tub pump, filter and heat exchange unit safely against freezing and rain, is robust and cheap. Nor are we…
Shifting things for the auction . . .
Every year, the annual charity auction re-appears at Allendale Village Hall. There’s junk galore, it’s true, but there are treasures amongst the dross that the cognoscenti are actually very keen on, though they always profess nonchalant disinterest. More on the…
A memento for the grands
For over a year now, I’ve sat myself at our kitchen table, looking through the big window out over the garden, thinking about things, life, the universe — you know, thinking. While I’ve been sitting, I’ve been watching the birds,…
Gordon the guinea fowl
I saw my first guinea fowl at Beamish Open Air Museum, probably twenty-five years ago. They were scurrying around the miner’s cottage, just near to the Methodist chapel, and they even rated a descriptive legend. Apparently they were favourites of…