Posted in Britain, Culture, Drink, Family, Food, Holidays, Patriotism, Poetry, tagged Burns' Night, Robert Burns, William Topaz McGonagall on January 30, 2008 | 2 Comments »
You are not in the least Scottish.
This has always been a source of faint irritation because you are able to conjure up in almost equal amounts a Welsh background, an Irish one, a Northern English past, a Southern English birthplace and a strong connection to the Channel Islands out of France. So to miss out on being [...]
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Posted in Architecture, Britain, Chelsea, Culture, Food, Music, Nodnol, Sightseeing, The Proms, the Royal Albert Hall on July 30, 2007 | 4 Comments »
So there you and B are, sitting on a bench eating grapes and a pork pie, admiring the view of large tombstones which populate the square you are in, and basking in the unexpected sunshine.
Suddenly you become aware that the young lady next to you has not only come prepared with cutlery and a china plate [...]
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You should have been reading about the barbarian hordes rampaging across Britain in the 500s. You should have been preparing lessons - this week’s topic is ’love’. You should at least have been scrubbing the bathroom.
Instead you decided to cook a Moroccan feast. It’s from your new cookbook. Arabesque by Claudia Roden. You’ve been staring longingly (and [...]
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You have always considered that Turner’s paintings of the sea are often a bit on the beige side.
You are aware, of course, that water is not necessarily blue in the same way that holiday brochures of Caribbean islands, children’s paintings and remote mountain tarns would have us believe. Nevertheless, you always assumed that the correct [...]
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Yesterday you indulged your cultural heritage as a middle class British woman from the Home Counties by standing in a drafty village hall surrounded by thatched cottages, 17th Centrury pubs and rolling farmland, serving polystyrene cup after polystyrene cup of stewed tea for seven and a half hours.
Even better was the fact that the tea pot was [...]
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Posted in Drink, Food on March 11, 2007 | 5 Comments »
You have just finished a marathon cooking session.
So far today you have made a banana and walnut cake with added sultanas so B would eat it. You burnt it, but it’s quite nice now you’ve cut the edges off. Still, it is rather superfluous to need since you have 1001 chocolates in the house if you [...]
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Posted in Food, Holidays, Marriage on February 14, 2007 | 22 Comments »
So this morning in a fit of Valentine’s Day madness you went all out and made pancakes for your beloved husband.
In fact, they weren’t just pancakes but blini, which are clearly superior (with added yeast). You’d give the recipe, but the last time you went at it from scratch it took no less than [...]
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Posted in Education, Food, Holidays, Work on January 10, 2007 | No Comments »
“Could you just take one of these,” you found yourself saying on Sunday in the somewhat impersonal, majestically firm and wholly blighting tone of voice you reserve for Giving Instructions to Students, “and pass the rest along?”
The ‘please’ which followed was, as ever, a bit of an afterthought.
And then reality came rushing back in and you realised you [...]
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Once upon a time you asked a Russian if he’d enjoyed his recent business trip to Great Britain.
“Yes,” he said, “London was great. But,” he added, a look of slightly shocked disgust sliding over his face, “the British really drink far too much.”
This isn’t an isolated opinion either but pretty much the the first comment on the [...]
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AB’s Christmas meme:
This quiz makes some assumptions about the way that various mid-winter festivals are celebrated in the modern world. Feel free to change it to suit your circumstances.
Which mid-winter festival(s) did your family celebrate when you were a child?
Christmas and New Year.
Which mid-winter festival(s) do you celebrate as an adult?
British Christmas.
New Year in the Russian style, which is the [...]
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