Tag Archives: Kent
Ave Angliae Mater!
Well here I am. Home. I am officially home. I am now neither Homesick nor Heatstruck (Any ideas for a new blog name, folks? Answers on the back of a postcard…). I am not permitted to complain about the British weather in any way ever again – either directly or implicitly – for the rest …
The Paths Untaken: Making the Most of Where We Are…

We’re all guilty of it: never visiting that National Trust property that’s only half an hour away; never getting around to trying that lovely looking restaurant passed every day on the way home from work; never walking the promising public footpath that cuts back across the fields just before the motorway turn-off; never exploring the …
Walking back to Happiness
I am about to head home again for a week of British autumn and, as I pack my suitcase full of thermal undies and attempt to zip it closed (having first removed the dozing cat from within), I am reminded of the last time I packed my bags for a flight – back home in …
Windswept and Winterstruck
So, for all my homesick yearnings and complaining about how mercilessly hot it is out here, it seems I have acclimatized after all. After three years, my internal thermostat must have recalibrated to Middle Eastern settings, because I was totally, profoundly shocked by how cold it was back home in England. I don’t mean just …
I’m so hungry I could eat a horse…
In a way we should be grateful for the current horse-meat scandal, shouldn’t we. It has made us think a bit more about the things we do and don’t want to eat and just how much we are prepared to pay for good food. A lot of people have started to question the ethics surrounding …
Noises Off
Of all the different sounds there are to wake up to – a tuneful dawn chorus, the dulcet tones of Radio 4, the miaow of a hungry cat or the gentle snoring of one’s better half – I would say construction noise from a nearby building site is one of the least pleasant. And out …