Finding the chase and cutting to it

Mothering Sunday was not originally about celebrating Mother’s Day – it’s an old age tradition where people returned to their “mother church” – the main parish church or cathedral where they were baptized or raised. This act of returning home is the original meaning of “going a-mothering”. It is celebrated on the fourth Sunday in […]

Strolling through our local town centre or talking with family, it’s tempting to think that the grey skies overhead this UK winter are a sign that climate warming isn’t really happening. Actually, they are almost certainly a symptom of climate warming in action. Compared to the past few Novembers, November 2025 was dramatically warmer and […]

This is a bit of a departure from my normal sort of post, but with the changes going on in our place, I wanted to cover making a house a home. Over the years, there have been many articles written in many types of publications (like this one) and TV shows talking about style, sometimes […]

I’ve taken a day off, what with all the work to get the house ready for the photos we promised the window company, to get the house clean for guests over Christmas. The house is deserted as Jon is working in the office today, so I also need to look after myself. Not a problem […]

I love when people say this, because the thing I’m interested in is the total cost of ownership. Since lockdown, we’ve kept up many of the dishes and techniques we learnt when we had more time. And when you are doing the cost, you really should take your time into consideration. When you are money […]

Today is Saturday 20th December, and I have plans. My beloved is doing his turn stewarding a game at our local football club, and I am aiming to achieve the following: Ideally, the aim was to do a little more, but those were the big three. So, how did I do? Well, I woke up […]

Motives are what define us. They allow us to get up in the morning and get a boogie on rather than languish in bed – and believe me, we have all had those mornings where staying in bed and pulling the covers over our heads makes the most sense! For many, their jobs allow them […]

OK, last weekend the clocks changed and I did have that extra hour in bed last week. But I am still working on summer time, so when I woke up early this week, I seized the day. My beloved husband has taken up a lot of the slack since I got a bad bug last […]

I start, along with the confusion of achieving something new, my husband’s tone was “game show announcer” – not something I hear from him very often! The prompt for this announcement was my own surprise at having finished a packet of yeast before it had gone past it’s best before date – again, my beloved’s […]

This has been inspired by https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468067222001201 . Having funded a pump myself, I appreciate that the pump itself is an expensive piece of kit, but that isn’t where the costs lie. Let me take you through this. Examination of cost of buying and running a pump. Item Frequency of payment Cost over life time. Pump […]