The other day (another of those warm late summer days), Sally and I unwittingly became the agents of a mini mass extinction, and I’m afraid to say we are still undergoing intensive counselling for post-traumatic stress. That includes a couple of trips out for coffee and scones, so we do anticipate being in fine fettle [...]
No doubt my Mum will despair of me, but I am struggling with questions of religion again, as I have done since I was a teenager. Mum is a Catholic and brought me up in that faith, but the best thing she ever did for me was to listen to me when I started asking [...]
Treating ourselves to a well-earned break the other day, Sally and I were sitting outside the café at Goodrich Castle, enjoying a coffee and a scone (brilliant scones, by the way, and absolutely gorgeous coffee), when I noticed a fly scurrying along the table to check for crumbs. Unlike most flies, this one seemed very [...]
On the back road from Hoarwithy to Monmouth, between St Owen’s Cross and Whitchurch, there are some semi-permanent temporary traffic lights, where the road has been cordoned off around a building with dangerously bulging walls. Because these lights have been here for many months, a growing pile of detritus has accumulated by the roadside where [...]
conspiracy n. 1 a secret plan to commit a crime or do harm, often for political ends I love a good conspiracy theory. It brightens my day, a) because it is often founded on something quite plausible, and, b) because it provokes heated arguments between supporters and detractors, which is always good for a laugh. [...]
I was thinking about what I said the other day about labels, and about why Sally and I are now so careful about our food buying. It depresses me to think that people might think we are a couple of nutters suffering from that recently diagnosed eating disorder, orthorexia, but we will not change our [...]
It has been fascinating to watch the recent series on TV, The Victorian Pharmacy. Apart from opening another window onto a time when the general attitude, in a country devoted to imperial expansion, was one of fearless inventiveness, it also gives us an insight into the new commercialism that defined the era. Everything was seen [...]
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There is much talk these days about being green, but not enough common sense. Unfortunately, we live in a 24/7 news-and-media culture, and the media herd roam the arid plains of our troubled world looking for sustenance. Even a faint whiff of a tasty story provokes a stampede and, if there is anything to be [...]
Those of you who know anything about Aspen House, or who might have come across either or both of my books (The Food Maze, and How To Eat Like There’s No Tomorrow), will know that we have a bit of a thing about labels. And those of you who might have trawled the previous Aspen [...]
For the last six years, my scribblings have been appearing in a more traditional guise, as sporadic entries on the diary pages of Aspen House, the B&B I run with my partner, Sally Dean. That was all very well whilst the entries related to life at Aspen House, but more recently my ramblings were becoming [...]