There are some days that just make you want to sing with the freshness and vitality of everything around you. For me, yesterday  was one of those days. The morning started out sunny but with a sharp, cold breeze and, looking out across the bay, the sea was the bluest I’ve seen it this year, sparkling [...]

‘Upon this primrose hill Where if Heav’n would distil A shower of raine. Each several drop might goe To his owne primrose, and grow manna so.’ – John Donne (1572 – 1631) One of my favourite walks is carpeted with wild primroses at the moment. I remember picking them from the very same place when [...]

Between 1820 and 1930, four and a quarter million British people emigrated to the United States of America in the hope of finding a release from the depression here and discovering a new life. They took with them technological skills and the similarities in language and culture meant that they quickly integrated.   My great [...]

Our eldest daughter  would have celebrated her 21st birthday today, so it seemed appropriate that I dedicate this  blog entry  to her memory. Nuff said.

On this day, April 12th, 1955, Jonas Salk, after much research done on monkey kidney cells, announced the successful creation of a vaccine against the dreadful illness, Polio. Most people knew someone who had either suffered the debilitating effects of polio or who had died from it. The announcement of a vaccine that could go [...]

I’ve reviewed one of my favourite vegetarian eateries a number of times in a variety of places, but I’ve never mentioned it on my  blog, so I want to put that right today. I stumbled upon The Goji Café in York, last year, after being in the city to review another restaurant; still feeling incredibly hungry after I’d [...]

In many parts of England, bloodsports used to be associated with Lent and Eastertide and for most places, Shrove Tuesday was marked by cockthrowing – the tradition given a nodding remembrance to in the tossing of the pancake, but in one part of North Yorkshire, cockthrowing was entertainment for the whole of the fifty liturgical [...]

            “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)     Link: I am indebted to naturalist, Douglas Mills for these stunning images, whose property they remain. More of his beautiful work can be seen at: http://picturing.blogspot.com/

  No. I don’t think each miscreant had a new one. Caesar had better use for tribute money. Somewhere there must have been a store of them Made by a local carpenter. Who knows What he thought of his work. Did he think Not for me, ye gods! Ha! Not for me! Smoothing the wood [...]