Family love
When I was a child occasionally somebody, usually my father, would say Family Love, which was the signal for the four of us to make a circle, facing inwards with arms around one another and say a long...
View ArticleIdentity, diversity and local things
Embroidery of a local landmark by my grandmother, Chrissie Allison In the first few minutes at Schiphol it was hard to think I was in another country. Everything looked the same. It was nothing like...
View ArticleStatus quo
That's the Belgians said a Dutch friend, when I recounted the tale of the practica in Antwerp. They don't like the status quo upset. Everything is just so and you are supposed to go along with it....
View ArticleLavender moments
I like those moments that I realise we have made into important and frequent parts of our days - of pure sensory enjoyment, of pause, of play, of opportunity for reflection. We find them intensely...
View ArticleNaming feeling
This BBC article about the Positive lexicography project is about untranslatable words. Or rather, since untranslatable suggests it is not possible to translate them, words for which we have no...
View ArticleSanta
My husband doesn't really do Christmas, or birthdays or anniversaries though he does write cards for the family and he comes to Christmas lunch at my parents' house. This year he has taken to...
View ArticleNo complaints
Clive James, who, famously, has been terminally ill for many years, was recently in wonderful conversation (on iPlayer) with the Mary Beard. That Mary who has shown that being one's unaffected self is...
View ArticleThe excuse of dogs
The main reason I eventually get the decorations down before Christmas is because as a child I grew up in houses that were nicely decorated over the festive season, warm and welcoming with mulled...
View ArticleOmission
There was a section missing from that blurb. The man who had been her first love introduced her, still in her late twenties, to London, that mesmerising harlot. They lured her - tantalising, decadent,...
View ArticlePublic education
Walking through the park with my younger son, and especially coming home with him is the highlight of my day and of my life. My twelve year old now likes to make his own way to and from school. For...
View ArticleHuman Affection
It will be Mother's Day soon. Both my sons are affectionate, but the younger one is still a child, not yet ten, very much like the child in this poem. It is still hard to believe that in a couple of...
View ArticleUnreality
Yesterday my son asked to use his Amazon gift card. - Sure. What did you have in mind? I said, thinking with guilty relief: For once, no tussle about getting a book from the library instead of buying...
View ArticleCivilised places
Plastercast of the Farnese Hercules in Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology I read, shocked, recently, that German Jews have been warned not to wear kippas in the face of a rising tide of...
View ArticleThree Wee Kingdoms
Three wee kingdoms: The doctor, the council, the school. Meant to serve you, Meant to ask: how well do we do? Meant to ask - and mean it: How can we improve? But: no, no, no. We can't. We wont. We...
View ArticleInches
The day Jeremy and Boris came to Perth we were travelling by bike, crossing a side street when we met a man I'd never seen: Forties, grey suit, a stranger on his way to the debate perhaps or homeward...
View ArticleSupply-side advantage
Straggle-haired, pasty-faced, gimlet-eyed, frumpy, dumpy in leggings. Rolled off the sofa to exhort "Health and wellbeing". Driving home in a Discovery, long hols, fat cat. 300 metres to the council...
View ArticleDisguised compliance
This piece came about when a couple I know were facing a Compulsory Order for social work involvement. No matter what they did, they were at fault, whether they did what they were told by the...
View ArticleNarrative control I
This piece came after hearing the most recent story from a couple with a young child whose challenges mean it would make ordinary school currently impossible. If you have read the shocking article in...
View Article'Correspondance'
This piece came about after our run-ins with the council education department. It is grim reading but it ends on a tragi-comic note. My elder son came home from a new school with a note saying he had...
View ArticlePrimary End of Term Awards Ceremony - removed
I have removed the piece 'Primary End of Term Awards Ceremony' which was here. I don't want to prejudice my younger son's remaining two years at primary school. His experience in the Scottish...
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