Learning how to teach English as a foreign language is making me think about how I learned it. I can’t remember. Everyone around me did. It’s a problem. It’s made…
Adder berries
When I was a boy I lived in the countryside, but I didn’t really know anything much about it. It had changed. We were surrounded by fields but we didn’t…
Drinking at lunchtime
Back in the day, when that woman from the Darling Buds of May was still er, budding with Pop Larkin and hadn’t even met Michael Douglas who was still on…
Planned to fail
Odd Week It’s been a strange week for my front door. I’m trying to sell my house. Apart from the front door it’s great, but apparently the front door has…
Rurality
Not Your Heart Away “What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain. The happy highways where I went and cannot…
One of those Facebook days
You know how it is As the cliché goes, it’s complicated. We met about six months ago and argued about almost everything and about two months ago we came to…
Read all about it
I’m not from round ‘ere. Eerily like Ben in Not Your Heart Away, I grew up in a country town. Also like him, I don’t think I knew anything much…
Wrong-footed
I heard there was a lunch at a club I belong to, but I wasn’t sure when or exactly where. I asked a friend who’s a member. She said she’d…
Clouded hills
I cycled nine miles to a friend’s farm the other evening to be there for a meeting at seven. We were going to discuss the business plan I’m writing for…
That Sort Of Girl
It definitely is my age. I’ve been thinking about sex more than recently. Well, my age and other stuff, anyway. Back in the impossibly long-ago days when Ben scored his…