It would be remiss if we missed out on a small window of opportunity to offer up a hymn of praise to local builders currently working throughout these valleys. We might not be able to fit every tradesperson in the…
Category: Anecdote
The Tea Dance
Mary Gibson invited me specially to drop in this afternoon to chat with the regulars at Wednesday afternoon’s Tea Dance Society in Allendale Village Hall. So I’ll certainly have more stories and information about this beloved institution in Allendale, later…
Making the Christmas cake
Apparently we’re a week late on this lovely kitchen task; you’re supposed to make your family’s Christmas cake some six weeks ahead of the day itself, to give it time to mature, and also, of course, to soak up even…
Willow whips in the boggy bit
I guess just about everyone around here knows what to do with that old bath that’s come out of the renovated bathroom: put it in the field and run a field drain into the fellside where the spring is emerging,…
Escape back home from the south
Eee but it’s great to be back home away from the hustle and bustle of the south. When the M6 moves on from Manchester, the traffic thins dramatically, and from there on past Lancaster, Tebay services (the best motorway services…
The hands fall off . . .
I know there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. The minute hand especially keeps falling off our big kitchen clock. I take it all apart, screw the little round nut back on, on top of the minute hand, and set it…
Upcycling: a new buzzword
Hearing this word more frequently these days, I asked Google what, precisely, it might mean: upcycle verb gerund or present participle: upcycling re-use (discarded objects or material) in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value…
The Joy of Editing
I don’t come by editing naturally. Rather, I fall in love with the words as they emerge, and feel loathe to mess with them thereafter. Always have done. But I learned, as a graduate student in the biomedical sciences, that…
Liz Conway, Bookbinder
Regular readers of the diary may recall the appearance of some pages of the tourist guide called ‘The Roman Wall District’ a couple months ago. A very tatty and bedraggled copy, we wanted to refresh it for convenient viewing by…
Very slow sloe gin
Okay, it could have been even slower, had we planted sloe berries, rather than the lovely saplings that came to us as a delightful Christmas present a few years ago. But just waiting for the first fruits to emerge from…