Four Babies And A Funeral

There must have been something in the water in March last year. In the last four weeks four friends of mine have had children. Even the most statistically-challenged should be able to figure that’s a rate of one baby a week. First Rufus arrived on 24th Jan, with a brief hiatus before Amadeus popped out on 11th Feb and a mere day later, Annabelle. Finally Rupert was delivered on 17th Feb. Except for Amadeus, all are firstborns. 

Son Can You Play Me A Memory

Just over a month ago I was remarking in this blog how subdued the atmosphere was at Pilsdon. It was the darkest of months and many were away. Yet it is remarkable how in a few short weeks the community has burst into life once more. We are bursting at the seams in the dining room, especially at lunchtimes with day visitors included; on Wednesday I had to prepare gallons of lentil and pumpkin soup to feed 34. Meals are becoming noisy affairs, with wry comments thrown out across tables and raucous laughter breaking out every so often through the general hubbub of conversation. 

A Radish By Any Other Name Would Taste As Peppery

The humble radish. Probably not a very common opening sentence to a blogpost. You might be hard pressed to find another recent post anywhere in the blogosphere that attempts to deal with the theme of the Radish. It’s only skipped briefly over even on websites devoted to vegetable horticulture. The radishes grown at Pilsdon have certainly been overlooked by those tasked with feeding the community, with the unfortunate result that they have just grown bigger and bigger, the largest ones now threatening to topple and crash onto our manor house, utterly destroying it and everyone within.

Like A Rolling Stone

Toby's hobbit yurt-chapel

THUD. THUD. THUD. Each dull crack echoed around the woodland. THUD. “Harder!” screamed the little boy excitedly. Sweat dripped from my lip. “Louder!”. We were already at our limit. “Three more” said Toby. THUD. THUD. THUD. We stepped back to admire our handiwork. The two-metre-long wooden post was now firmly embedded in the hole in the ground dug for it earlier by a mechanised digger with a huge screwdriver.  Toby and I had been whacking it down with a two-handled heavy-duty metal tube, closed at one end, designed for just such an activity. We then filled in the hole around the post with various stones which Toby crushed down violently with a tamper to pack them in tight, which enabled me to remark that he was having a tamper tantrum.