“Go back to your books, to your armchair. Plant your trees, watch them grow. If more people valued home above gold, this world would be a merrier place.”

— Thorin Oakenshield

Latest Posts


  • Ducks on the Ice

    Well, here we are, talking about the weather again! It’s only a few weeks since normal life was halted by floods. Now everything is disrupted by snow, which may be no great shakes to those of you living in colder… Continue reading

  • Walking Boots and Pink Laces

    I have walking boots! Proper walking boots! With pink laces! The Man of the House is very dismissive about those laces – I think he feels pink is far too frivolous for sensible footwear for a woman who wants to… Continue reading

  • Grimm Thoughts on Fairy Tales

    Further to my mention of fairy stories in yesterday’s post, did anyone else out there listen to Grimm Tales on Radio 4? Writer and mythologist Marina Warner, whose work I always admire, marked the bicentenary of the first publication of… Continue reading

  • The Making of a Marchioness

    I may have said this before, but I’m a sucker for fairy tales and happy endings, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Making of a Marchioness ticks all the right boxes – kind, gentle heroine in straitened circumstances marries her prince… Continue reading

  • Mud, Moss and Martyrs

    Happy New Year to you all! Earlier this week, on January 2, it was the Feast Day of The Thousand Holy Martyrs of Lichfield, who may – or may not – have been slain for their faith. St Amphibaus (whose… Continue reading