friends

Tea plate

We recently made two new friends (I hope… I trust..). We met them at supper at another friend’s house and since then we have all continued to meet as a group. This has been great.

But I think that you can’t really get to know someone and solidify a friendship within a group. Perhaps you could over years? But conversations amongst six or so people are different than one to ones or even between two couples. […continue reading…]


Charles has just been to France. One of the results is he has waved a flag for an old, not quite resolved tension. Which is: pudding or cheese first??

Understand: pudding is for guests and on normal days cheese […continue reading…]


This is another special request post! (Sounds good but I really only have two and a half readers really and one of them is married to me).

It’s for a post about birthdays – I had one recently. Particularly about celebrating them, or perhaps not, since they are just about adding another year, which must inevitably involve losing another year.

I refused to celebrate a landmark birthday, partly for that reason and partly because I thought there was not much to celebrate, given I had arrived at that date just by living. A bit of a ‘so what?’

I was thinking, we should celebrate good news, good luck, excitements. I thought about those landmark birthday celebrations in great age when you think everyone is thinking ‘the next time we’ll meet will be for the funeral’ and how I so don’t want that..

But I thought then – those celebrations are often family orientated. […continue reading…]


The best relationship in the world has to be one where I don’t feel any need to be careful. No need to be checking before I speak, wondering what will this person think of me saying that? Will it upset them? Will they understand me? Will I sound stupid?

Even in the best relationship in the world (ahem…) this possibility of not having to think twice before opening my mouth may change from day to day. […continue reading…]