Everyone in England wants a garden to call their own. It's one of the main reasons they move out of London, if they were not fortunate enough to have bought a house in Hampstead in the 1960s. Ironically, no one particularly wants a house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, as it seems to have very little... Continue Reading →
Slapped with a wet fish – really
I've been having a mopey few days. You know, drifting into self-absorbed disappointment about life, for no good reason. So I was unreasonably amused by a story on the BBC this morning; some random Irish teenager walked into a shop and slapped a shop worker with a big wet fish. A bream, in fact. I'm... Continue Reading →
Knowledge in England
In common with many arts graduates, I delight in accumulating mostly useless knowledge. Since I'm not the brightest person I know, I tend to assume that this is knowledge also accumulated by everyone else. Interacting with a variety of different people suggests that this is not the case, and so I end up feeling bad... Continue Reading →
Useless days
Some days, I get to the end of the day, and realise that I could have achieved more, or at any rate destroyed less, by not getting out of bed at all. This is one of those days. You know you're off to a bad start when you have to write yourself a list of the... Continue Reading →
I want to break free
Life in my house is always fun, which is rather a good thing too, as I spend nearly 24 hours a day in it. Some days, I'm full of motivation for getting all my chores done - drop husband off at the station at 6.50 am, hang around waiting for Sainsbury's to open at 7... Continue Reading →
When you have everything, you have a lot to lose
Since I got married on Saturday, I suppose this blog has changed a little. It used to be about questions of life and death, and peripatetic pleasures along the way. Having ticked all the conventional life boxes (mortgage, kids, marriage), I feel a bit silly waxing lyrical about politics, philosophy or art. Surely someone so... Continue Reading →
I’m getting married today
Our lovely little boy kindly slept for ten hours continuously last night for the first time. Perhaps he knows it's a big day. Unfortunately, I stayed awake for hours worrying about how the day will pan out, imagining all the things that could go wrong, and getting quite frightened of standing in front of 100... Continue Reading →
The talentless success stories of life
There's been a lot of press coverage this morning of a 21-year old Merrill Lynch intern who apparently died of a heart attack after working 3 all-nighters in a row. The press has made this largely into a story about how tough it is these days for young people to secure a good job, and... Continue Reading →
Lost in nine months
I have started a number of posts recently on a variety of topics, all of them very much in the news, and important. Like how pointless the UN seems to be if it keeps pretending Syria isn't poisoning its own citizens, how maybe Edward Snowden's defection to Russia isn't quite as ironic as all that... Continue Reading →
Is London still a place to live?
Along with everyone who isn't getting a six-figure bonus, but is having a baby, we have recently joined the legions of people who used to live in some quaint flat near an urban park and a main road selling whatever is the local speciality, but now live in a commuter town within an hour's travel... Continue Reading →
The resting writer 