My wife and our 10-year-old daughter enjoy eating sushi. There’s a locally-run place nearby, not part of a chain, where they go at least once a month. For various reasons Thursday has become a regular sushi evening for them. I have never joined them, partly because I do not believe that sushi constitutes a proper… Continue reading “It’s not a meal, it’s a snack”
Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my mother’s death. I wrote about the anniversary a year ago, in this piece. This year we followed a slightly different pattern to previous years. We prepared for the anniversary by planting some flowers the day before. It was the first time that my children have helped out with… Continue reading Another Anniversary Day
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. It commemorates, as you may know, the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary that she is “with child”. For many years now we have been able to discuss this event with a memory from my daughter’s first Nativity Play at her primary school. The boy chosen to… Continue reading “Mary! You’re gonna have a baby!”
Recently, while I was hunched over a spreadsheet on my laptop at the kitchen table, my 10-year-old daughter asked, “Is that Excel?” It was. “Can I show you something?” she asked. In a blank cell, in a new blank workbook, she typed the following: =1+1 When she pressed Return the number 2 appeared in the… Continue reading Word of the week: BODMAS
In this piece from last year, about my daughter reading Ian Serraillier’s “The Silver Sword”, I noted that we had a copy of the book throughout my childhood, and I never even opened it, not once. The same goes for Clive King’s “Stig of the Dump”. Unlike Serraillier’s book, which I haven’t been able to… Continue reading “Stig of the Dump” and typefaces
Earlier this month I wrote about the phrase “I remember when this was all fields”, as part of this piece. I have lived in the same part of West London for my entire life but do not remember when it was all fields. I do, however, remember when we had record shops, video rental stores… Continue reading Where have all the petrol stations gone?
Have you ever run out of petrol? (Or, as our American friends would put it, have you ever run out of gas?) I haven’t, and have only come close to it three times, including once earlier this month, when we had a replacement car for a few days. Our car was having some work done… Continue reading Running out of petrol
I enjoy lying in and lazing around on Saturday mornings but a few weeks ago decided to change my lazy ways. For some reason my 10-year-old daughter invariably wakes before 7am on Saturdays and if nobody else is up she spends an hour or two watching children’s TV. One Friday night last month I suggested… Continue reading Marylebone mornings
Disconsolate means “very unhappy and unable to be comforted”, according to the Oxford Dictionary of English on my Kindle. My 10-year-old daughter and I have been reading “The Silver Sword” by Ian Serraillier. She had been learning about the Second World War at school and chose this book to accompany her studies. We had a… Continue reading Word of the week: disconsolate
My 12 year old son has started swearing. He uses “the F word”, as I will euphemistically call it in this opening paragraph, although it’s spelt out in full further down. As I wrote earlier this year my daughter, who is now 10, has been exposed to plenty of swearing at football matches, but fortunately… Continue reading A joke about children swearing (contains rude words)
The Compartments 