You’ve got mail

It has been fascinating to watch how my grandchildren have embraced the concept of “home schooling”, as the restrictions introduced during the Covid 19 pandemic, turn their whole learning experience upside down. My own children, and now their children, have always had face to face learning in the classroom, but as a child, I undertook…

15 November

France – 2016 They arrived early in the morning. It was cold and still dark. If there had been a sunrise, it was merely a changing of the light from the heavy blackness of night to a paler, but more depressing, mantle of greyness and foreboding. As they alighted from the hire car, the gates…

Bunnies and Eggs

As a child, growing up on a farm, there was always that annual dilemma of allowing the Easter Bunny to romp through the paddocks and into excited dreams, to deliver a bounty of treats on Easter Sunday. The rigours of Lenten observance, meatless Fridays and committed attendance at Holy Week church services, gave way to…

MAKING BUTTER

There was a post on Facebook the other day that made me laugh. 

How often do we check what is going on in the rest of the world by quickly scrolling through posts on social media, glancing hurriedly at photographs, cartoons and the never-ending run of motivational quotes and misleading headlines? We skim through trying to put aside that feeling of guilt for time wasted.

And there it was, a photograph of someone milking a cow.

ANNIVERSARIES

I was with my Dad when he died. It was a Tuesday. Each year on 1 April, when grandkids are putting into practice those well-rehearsed April Fools’ Day pranks, my inclination to laugh and join in is often contrived, and at best, a half-hearted attempt at appearing amused. The day holds significance for me in…