One thirty on a cloudy Friday afternoon and already we hear a rumble of cars gliding past the farmyard to the car park in a big field beyond. By two o’clock a steady stream of people begin to arrive in the garden. More and more keep coming all afternoon! Saturday and Sunday are the same,…

I’ve just found an old copy of Country Living Magazine February 1994 “How to Survive Redundancy, a second career”. My, that took me back a bit! There we are photographed climbing the hill, pitch forks in hand and dogs in tow, starting our new life. We had already lived in our funny old house for…

Is it spring at last? As each day passes the sun rises and sets a little higher above the hills and suddenly the valley is not in darkness. We see sunlight once more. Sun greets me in the morning now, as I watch Millie race round the garden before her breakfast. Birds sing. Indeed, they…

It’s Groundhog Day: time stands still, time freezes, all is repetition, repetition. Is it just me or do the days seem to creep by as weeks fly past? What day is it today? Everything seems the same and yet completely different. Routine takes over my life. But how lucky am I to have space all…

. We woke on New Year’s morning to a frost-white sparkling world. Tiny clouds bathed in pink sunlight scudded across a turquoise sky.  An omen for a better year, I pondered hopefully, as I struggled out into the frozen landscape. Such a contrast to the recent squelch of months of mud suddenly replaced by the…

And here we are again thrust into another national lock-down, empty days stretching out ahead once more.  This time not even long warm summer evenings to enjoy. The clocks have gone back and dusk descends earlier each day creeping like a great grey blanket, spreading prematurely across a rain-soaked sky. As the light fades, we…