The joy of bookmarks

When I was a Saturday girl at the local library, I found some pretty bizarre bookmarks, most notably a rasher of (raw) bacon. I never need to get to this level, as I have literally dozens of bookmarks to use. I buy many of my books second-hand, and from time to time select some to…

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Church and the new normal

What does church look like here, now, two years into the pandemic?

How to reverse pre-diabetes

As the title suggests, this is going to read like a smug post. In fact, I feel more relieved than smug, and I offer it here in case it encourages others. As regular readers know, back in the summer I had blood tests which by chance revealed that I was pre-diabetic. My GP advised me…

Sugar, sugar…

Sugar cubes: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Würfelzucker -- 2018 -- 3582” / CC BY-SA 4.0 When you reach the age of 60, the UK NHS offers you some exciting experiences - or at least that was the case before the pandemic. There's a one-off general health check, which wasn't very encouraging about my body weight, but at that point I didn't…

The first time: how to publish in academia

Last week I was asked by someone relatively new to the academic game how they could start publishing. This being 2021, I rapidly realised that I should ask Twitter before answering. I wasn't sure how far my own experience, back in the 1980s, was typical in Arts and Humanities subjects, let alone how it would…

The glamour of the academic life

Recently, on Twitter, there was a very entertaining account of a nightmare experience of giving a paper by Duncan Wilson, a historian at the University of Manchester. Just remembering the time I gave a talk in a uk university, 3 people turned up and 1 fell asleep after 10 min. They then told me there…

Shedding stuff

How do you get rid of someone's belongings in a way that's appropriate and respectful (and even helpful!)?

Living in the between-times: rules and spontaneity

I don't go to gardens for chaos: there's enough of that already.

The end of the road

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while because, as someone who - as I said when I started this blog - only knows what she thinks when she starts writing, I need to process my mother's death. I could do that on my own and with friends but, as I have already…

Regaining the Trust

Today was very special. We returned to one of my special places: the National Trust's The Vyne. Back on 20 March, as lockdown descended, I blogged about my sadness at the closure of my very favourite National Trust site, Greys Court. Over the past few years it has been watching the seasons change, particularly in…