11th February 2013 At the end of January, I made my usual pilgrimage north to Thurcroft to check on the house. Since Nan no longer wishes to join me on these jaunts, I took along Peter, a Kiwi pal from the Rugby Club. Thankfully, the weather was more forgiving than in recent months, and the… Continue Reading

28th January 2013 Overnight, the wind and rain swept away the snow, bringing a brief rise in temperature. By morning, the white blanket had gone, leaving us with the all-too-familiar sight of a swollen, flooded river. Same script, different week. Charlotte has been in the wars with her tooth. The dentist initially found nothing amiss,… Continue Reading

21st January 2013 Winter has finally arrived with a vengeance, and, true to form, the entire country has ground to a halt. The media is once again overflowing with “scenic” snow photographs (all suspiciously similar) and endless clips of skidding cars performing involuntary pirouettes. Jamie has been making the most of it with his snowboard,… Continue Reading

18th January 2012 Last Tuesday, Nan, Sue, and I ventured off to North Wales. The previous day had brought a dusting of snow, about half an inch still clinging stubbornly to the ground, and more was predicted throughout the week. Naturally, we set off with a healthy dose of trepidation, fully expecting a white-knuckle drive,… Continue Reading

14th January 2012 One afternoon, Charlotte, Sarah, Ellis, and I decided to go geocaching between Rothwell and Desborough. Sarah has been meeting up with Charlotte quite regularly, finding caches all over Harborough, and this time, they invited me along. Earlier, I had been out cycling in the wilds of Leicestershire, and, growing impatient waiting for… Continue Reading

30th December 2012 On Monday, Nan joined the Huntingdon Gardens gang for their Christmas dinner. They trekked to Enderby to dine at a Toby Inn (yes, apparently they still exist, who knew?). The food was the usual festive fare, and naturally it wouldn’t have been a proper ‘wrinklies’ outing without a chorus of complaints: slow… Continue Reading

16th December 2012 For once, Friday night was a quiet one. Nan, Jamie, and Sarah were all at home or University, while the Rothwells had decamped to Kettering for Lucas’s birthday, celebrating with a ten-pin bowling party for his school friends and some old neighbours from Newark. That left just Sue and me. I rustled… Continue Reading

7th December 2012 I’ve been out with the chainsaw again, this time with a dual purpose: clearing trees and bushes along the riverbank to keep the floodwater moving downstream rather than letting it sulk in a dam of debris, and, of course, turning the lot into neat little logs. Waste not, want not. While hacking… Continue Reading

28th November 2012 Since getting back from Bulgaria, it feels as though the rain hasn’t let up once. The ground is so saturated it couldn’t swallow a thimbleful of water, let alone cope with another day’s deluge. Now any rain sits on the surface, sulking in great puddles the size of small lakes. My daily… Continue Reading

13th November 2012 Thanks to a welcome spell of fine weather, work on the pool marched along briskly with dawn-to-dusk shifts. Progress stalled briefly when a shortage of tiles loomed, breakages during the renovation proving far more frequent than anticipated. Salvation arrived when David and Milen unearthed a builder’s merchant, an hour’s drive away, that… Continue Reading