Being charming is an art (but not one I am always good at!)

( this blog has been a huge, and ongoing, learning process, typically spending much more time trying to learn how to do things than posting. Sometimes…

  We are expecting No3 ( our third child) sometime this summer, if all goes well please God. The impending arrival hasn’t yet caused the same frenetic preparation that No2 caused last year but there was such a gap between 2 and No1 (6 years) that it was like starting all over again. Preparations are [...]

Gardens: ubiquitous, underrated and urban

Being capable is an under-rated skill

C (my wife) lived in Turkey for a good few years, carefree years before kids, and has told me how everyone grows at least some of their own food there, a bit like the old days in Ireland. (We seem to be talking more about these carefree days as her current pregnancy progresses and becomes [...]

Delays in finishing the greenhouse cause snarling!

  Last year I had fantastic tomato and pepper plants.  They germinated and grew in a small portable greenhouse ( covered in a zip up plastic shield). They looked fantastic. But all too soon got too big. I put them outside and they didn’t do well; some tomatoes came but very few ripened and the [...]

I don’t know, but I suspect that starting a blog post with ‘as I get older I…’ would be an immediate excuse for the reader to flick back to the page they had open before. There are so many endings to that sentence, though, and all of them remind me that being right is not [...]

  The weather; sun, clear skies, windless, sounds like I am talking about Spain again but no, Cumbria in April. I saw our first swallow today, much earlier than last year sitting lonely but chirping merrily on a telephone line near the centre of town. No sign of any friends, he must be checking out [...]