I’m so delighted to provide Marjorie Anderson space for her lovely poem, a piece of work that set our Creative Writing class a-tingle last term. This poem, for me, develops the whole sense of the year ahead, and the year…
Category: Reminiscence
Allendale’s Evacuee Stories
And Linda Beck promised one from her daughter Anja as well. Allendale Primary School Year 6 class have been studying the local history of evacuation to the rural countryside during WWII. The diary has also featured another evacuee story which…
The Pub Leagues
Long long ago, when I was rather younger than I am now, I learned how to hoie quoits at a target of a stubby post that barely stood proud of the soft squishy clé-ay pit in which it was ensconced….
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…
Allen Valleys Local History Group
Yesterday evening I spent an intriguing hour with the Local History Group as Paul Mingard explained the fascinating story of some old glass plate negatives delivered over a decade ago into the hands of Margaret Stonehouse, then District Councillor. I…
Remembrance Day
Every Canadian of a certain generation learned several poems by heart. In my day, this was one of those poems: In Flanders FieldsBY JOHN MCCRAEIn Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the…
Remembrance Sunday
The Lych Gate honours the fallen from this parish in both World Wars of the last century. Remembrance Sunday, when the Last Post is played at the memorial, is always the closest Sunday to Remembrance Day itself: the 11th of…
7 Meditations on Autumn
I Sunrise is the best; the hot pink hues Illumine crispy autumn mornings. The frost coats swathes of garden grass In rough hewn patches of fast fading white. My wispy grey-white beard still fails To cover where the surgically stretched…
A Tea Set’s Journey
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…
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…