While I’m aware that there are much bigger problems on the world stage this week, in our little corner today is a sad day. We lost a beautiful member of our farm and family.
Redford, the bantam chook that the previous owner asked us to adopt when we bought this house, was savaged by a dog this morning.
It seems silly to feel this blue about a chicken, but she was one of our motley crew, and the circumstances surrounding her death play heavy on my heart. Animals suffer in the wild, but I was proud of the happy life our chickens lived, roaming our garden, the true definition of free range, not the supermarket definition of free range, which if you actually look into it is not very free range at all. Continue reading
Hey age, you scurrilous demon, you thief of time and wrinkle-free skin. Could you just stop chipping away at my body, mind and soul?
They say growing old is a privilege afforded to few. And I am very grateful to still be here. But youth is beginning to fade like a setting sun over a cloudy horizon. And I’m sorry to see it go, before I’d really had a chance to befriend it, enjoy it and realise I had it.
Things I hate about drifting into my mid 30s:
I’ve STILL got spots. Weren’t they supposed to be a teenage thing? I’m kind of bored of them now.
Crows feet, or soften the blow and call them laughter lines. For indeed HA HA HA at ageing! It is hilarious. But seriously, wrinkles and spots? Not fair. Continue reading
I’m not writing anything this week – I’m on strike*. Instead I thought I’d share this passage from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read it once, many years ago. Saw the film. But never did I notice how wonderfully Douglas Adams promotes veganism, in such a non-offensive, humorous way. Offensive, humourless idiots like me could learn a lot from him about the right way to go about changing the world.
*aka lazy.
One problem with being vegan is you’re trying to sail the same boat as some crew who want to head on the same course as you do (that is to say, into the sunset, smugly saving the world) but they want to get there on port tack, while you’re very much a starboard kind of skipper.
When I first wrote about going vegan, I could hardly say the word. Nine months later and I’m as vegan as a rhino. Your children’s children can thank me later – as can all the animals. And my own digestive system. Continue reading
Fijian? Or just a cavalier attitude to sunscreen?
We build a brand. The minutiae of personality that has our friends say ‘Oh, typical Fred!’ and ‘Classic Sally!’ My brand was built on the story I’d been telling myself since I was a child, based loosely on a story my parents told me, with the necessary exaggerations and fabrications to create the unique human being I liked to think I was. Continue reading
It is a hard task to change the fundamental aspects of our character. They say the first seven years are most important, for those years are the foundation upon which the rest of our lives are built. In my early days, I learned that it was a sin of such mammoth proportions it would bring great shame upon our household, if I were to be a foodie fuss-pot. Asking for seconds was a compliment to the host, making room for pudding was a masterclass in etiquette, plates were to be scraped clean. Wolf it all down, child. Continue reading
