Silent Sunday

Almond Shortbread Hearts, A Recipe

Silent Sunday

For National Poetry Day... A Poem

A Poem

I can't be doing with people

Who want to bugger about.

I can't be doing with people

Who feel the need to shout.

I can't be doing with people

Who are pointlessly rude

And I can't be doing with people

Who are ugly in the nude.

Rebel, Rebel ..

A school should be an establishment of learning, not of correction. A place to inspire and lead, not cudgel and cow but someone, somewhere seems to be forgetting that.

I've ranted about the Teen's Academy's newly designed uniform skirts before. Skirts that have been designed and introduced purely in an attempt to stop girls from rolling their skirts up to shorten them.

Shall I just repeat that: They've taken special measures to make sure that the girls wear uniform skirts that aren't either 'ill-fitting or too short' (ill fitting meaning too tight obviously), just in case girls expose too much thigh.

The Cat That Wasn't Our Cat...

Our cat Murphy 1995 -2015 

In January this year, Murphy the family cat passed away. He was 20 years old and I'd lived with him longer than both husband and children. He was family and when he died we mourned him as a family member, lost and irreplaceable. The TeenTwins commemorated Murphy's life with black cat tattoos and for months afterward every so often I would think I'd caught a glimpse of padding across the floor out of the corner of my eye.

And then one day, five months later, I didn't just see him in the corner of my eye. He was there, as calm as you like and solidly real, on the kitchen step, sat, expectant.

Poppies: Wave at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Unfortunately I didn't get to London to see the sensational Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red by artist Paul Cummins last year. The installation, designed to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War, flooded the Tower of London's moat with bright red ceramic poppies,one for each of the 888,246 British and colonial lives lost in the war.

Silent Sunday