Monthly Archives: August 2022

When cheap food becomes costly

My sister is sat working out which vegetables she will plant for the winter. Beds are now becoming clear and the prospect of rain next week brings an opportunity to sow root vegetables for winter harvest. Having been in Somerset … Continue reading

Posted in This sceptred isle | 4 Comments

Voices in the morning

Before six o’clock on an August morning and there is the sound of children’s voices coming down the road. Perhaps it is the warm weather prompting people to venture out early. With the windows open, the morning news is audible … Continue reading

Posted in Unreliable memories | 2 Comments

Whale meat again

The parody of Vera Lynn’s lyric expressed the feeling of many of those whose meat ration during the Second World war included whale meat. My father, a child in London during the war years, remembered it as tough and tasteless. … Continue reading

Posted in The stuff of daily life | 2 Comments

The end of the weekend

Sunday evening – once it would have seemed a moment of disappointment. Weekends in Somerset in my teenage years had a format.  It was a format that cannot have been prolonged or frequent, but which seemed to have a quality … Continue reading

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Blotting out a judge

Walking through Dorchester yesterday, I passed a pub named after the judge responsible for the 1685 Bloody Assizes. Looking up at the pub sign, that reputedly reproduces the judge’s image, I metaphorically spat at him and said out loud the … Continue reading

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