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Nostalgia for christmas past
There’s nothing like being ill just before Christmas. We dragged round to get the tree, and left it in the hall long enough for Julian to spray it in protest at the Burnham wood aspects of the yule branch. I washed the cat pee off, cut the bottom off to get it in the stand,…
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Remember
For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping something had been left, Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, The pity of war, the pity war distilled. Strange Meeting, Wilfred Owen For the past week we have been asked to remember: Remember, Remember the fifth of November Gunpowder…
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sleeping with more cats
The continuing saga of the cats who have owned me. Earlier episode here One of the things about Hattie, (we rarely called her Harriet) was that she had a ritual of staring out of the window every morning, which we attributed to her ‘checking outside was still there’. It turned out we were right. When…
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Clytha Castle
Clytha Castle has been on my list of places to stay for a long time – a folly in the best sense; it is a pinkish rendered, Gothick, castellated and turreted confection on a small hill in Monmouthshire – with panoramic views of Skirrid Fawr and Sugarloaf. It is gloriously daft – every opportunity for…
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sleeping with cats
I was going to call this dancing with cats, but decided it was derivative, and inaccurate! Spurred by the sad demise of my next-door-cat Cundy, a cat of great age and fortitude, who will be much missed by her family, and generations of schoolchildren and commuters who have been indelibly marked by her engaging manner…
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Me and My Pianos
I’ve been decorating the living room, and the piano was really getting in my way – too heavy to move! Solved that, (thanks Muireann) with a bit of lateral thinking and a long pole. So my imaginary blog reader is now asking themselves: Why is she on about pianos? Can she even play the piano? Naah… I can pick…
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Early Music part 2
Early music is a passion I share with my partner A, and a chance discovery led to the inspiration for an historical novel, The Cold Time. Sometime in 1993 , arriving early for a film at the Odeon at Marble Arch, we headed into HMV to browse, and I picked up a new release in…
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Early Music
Music I found early, and Early Music I found… My passion for words nearly got in the way of my interest in music, and I was almost oblivious to tunes until I introduced myself to a wide variety of music via the library I worked in when I was nineteen. I think I took music…
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The Imposter
Another Genealogy letter: My partner’s maternal Grandfather is a bit of an enigma: He vanished, apparently without trace, leaving his wife with three young children. The children suffered a great deal as a result, their mother took them back to live with her parents, but as the progeny of a broken home, they were shunned…
Cherry Potts, Writer 