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
It’s official. I’m statistically funnier than my sibling. Which makes me funnier than three entire people in this world – no mean feat. Or at least, if I read the fine print on a recent YouGov survey, I am like 46% of Youngest Sibling: ‘more likely to think they are funny’.
Which sounds to me like YouGov are trying to passive aggressively infer that we’re not as funny as we think we are. To which I say, knock knock. Who’s there? YouGov. YouGov who? You Gov me cos I’m funny. Continue reading
This is what microcephaly looks like. Absolutely beautiful if you ask me.
Driving to the gym after a hard day at the office, Radio 4’s evening news bulletin drifted out of the stereo. I usually half-listen to the news and half-listen to the thoughts in my head while I half-concentrate on driving. But then I heard a familiar word and my ears pricked. ‘Microcephaly.’ A word my family know so well, but not a word I’d expect to hear on prime time news.
‘Oh hello microcephaly,’ I thought, turning up the volume. ‘What are you doing on the radio?’
It was the first of many times I’d hear about microcephaly in the coming weeks. Until then, it wasn’t a word known to many, but it is now. 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
From the Isle of Wight? Then no, it’s not coming to a cinema near you.
There are some childhood rites of passage that never made it to the Isle of Wight in the ’80s. Although we did have a Wimpy restaurant, it speaks volumes about the beautiful (ish) island I once called home, that the Wimpy is still there. Is your childhood Wimpy still there? Thought not.
I went to the cinema once as a child, to see Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I remember announcing I didn’t want to go, being told I had to, then falling in love with Michael Jackson. By the time I was a teenager I’d ditched MJ in favour of Keanu Reeves, who after a few years muddling along with a pot belly, is hot again, so I win the long game. #NeverForgetKeanu Continue reading
What is cool? While I acknowledge that one man’s cool is another man’s dork, my own personal definition of cool seems to be all the little things I spy in other people and long to have as assets of my own. I would certainly never describe myself as cool, what with my penchant for being in bed by 9pm. Continue reading
