step mother

1225 days ago

Photo article from the Welsh Hovel: Olaf due here for 3 days after Christmas, will this be enough for you dear daughter?

Noted at Oxford for being a thirsty young lady, daughter Olaf is coming up after Christmas for a three day stay. I have prepared for her arrival. From our new kitchen, I ask my daughter: is this enough for you and your stepmother?

2077 days ago

Photos of the truly tiny Church of St Nicholas, near the Greek Hovel

This church is in the middle of nowhere on the long climb up from the sea at Kitries towards Stavropigio, the next village to my home one of Kambos. We drove up that road today after a day by the shore. I remember driving past this church with my father and late step mother on her last holiday before she passed away. She was clearly very ill at that point. We stopped the car and myself and Helen went inside. There was barely enough room for the two of us and the small lizard we found there.

2484 days ago

Photo: Picking gooseberries in the glorious English Rain at Shipston - how I would miss our summer rains

In Greece the summer rains are violent. Dark clouds gather above the Taygetos Mountains above the Greek hovel or sometimes out to see in the bay of Kalamata. The wind starts to pick up and you can hear it unsettling the trees, after a while the rustling of the leaves is so loud it sends a clear warning of what is to come. Thunder booms loudly, you start to see lightning and before you know it the rain is pouring down. You can be drenched, a dripping rat, within a minute or so as the skies empty.

2849 days ago

Writing about death and family then it happens for real

I was just writing about the subject of writing about death when the call came. My father and I had said goodbye to my step mother twice yesterday but by the afternoon he was not sure if she took it in. By 11 PM she was unconscious and so today my father, sister N and I just sat in Shipston joking and laughing about times gone by and the political pantomime and not mentioning what was going on fifteen miles away in Myton.

2882 days ago

Paddy Leigh Fermor's House visit part two- yes of course poor people must subsidise the upper middle classes

Much to the chagrin of the patrician twit who did not want a scruffy bearded fellow like me to gain admittance to the house of Paddy Leigh Fermor here in Kardamili, after much huffing and puffing my father made his way up a gentle slope and we passed through a large blue door and were in. We all headed straight for the library where most of the other folks on the tour were assembled.