Month: December 2019

My sister and husband achieved the near impossible feat of catching a bus from around the corner in Midsomer Norton, and arriving at her front door in Croydon, Surrey, four hours later. Sometimes people are just plain lucky, and this on New Year's eve when everyone is on the road. 1  local bus to Bath station (46min) 2  high speed train to London Paddington (1h 25m) 3  tube to London Victoria...

My sister and brother-in-law are leaving tomorrow for London after having been with us for a week. My answer to the above question is that you should not attempt too much on the last day but rather wind down the proceedings.  We did this by going to an extraordinary pub called the Railway Inn in Hallatrow.  Inside was the most remarkable collection of memorabilia, a thoroughly eccentric barman...

My sister has gone off to Wells today to see an old friend so we are left to our own devices and decided to take a walk. We went to our favourite old village called Wellow (See previous references) and then decided to go to the local Kennett and Avon canal which always promises to give many interesting photographs. This therefore is largely a photographic essay of canals in the off-season....

  Lunch on Christmas day has a mystique which is almost burdensome.  This year I decided to take up the challenge of preparing the whole lot myself. You have to be a strategic planner. Different foods take different times to prepare so that which takes the longest to cook, normally the meat offering, has to go in the oven first.  It sounds complicated when you have 10 different foods to...

Sunday - to a very homely rendering of the nine lessons and carols in my home church in Paulton, followed by mince pies and mulled wine. We saw many people that we don't normally see. Some people come to church just once or twice a year to keep in touch. Today to Wells to hear a carol service and to take part in it. We were advised to arrive early for a six o'clock service, five o'clock to be...

The person who inspired me to keep this diary was Samuel Pepys. He wrote his diary over 10 years and amassed over 1 1/4 million words. The most famous long novel is War and Piece by Dostoevsky , which consists of 587,287 words. So far in a little under three years I have written 612,157 words. I can only admire Samuel Pepys' tenacity. He had only a quill pen and candlelight. I use speech to text...