Life between the mountains and the sea
Today’s kitchen sink drama is brought to you by The Horses in the Back Field; brightening quarantine since 2020. A frolicking weeks-old foal makes a fine backdrop to dishwashing and a distraction from drudgery. Interesting to note how adept equine babies are at wrapping their mammies round their little fetlocks. This one nuzzles his […]
The last place you want to be on a Friday 13th, just as the country declares a State of Emergency in the face of a fast-approaching, potentially apocalyptic virus, is at the hospital Emergency Department. But that’s exactly where we found ourselves last Friday despite all our best laid self-isolating plans. Day 1 of school […]
The 9 year-old was, in his own words, ‘outraged’ at the scant covering of snow here at home last weekend. While friends in England were ‘enjoying’ blizzards we barely had a dusting, despite living at nearly 700 metres above sea level. No chance of a snow day from school on the horizon and simply not […]
Having exhausted the delights of ‘I spy’ and ‘I went to market’, we were passing the time on a long car journey with some ‘trabalenguas'; Spanish tongue twisters. A game certain to challenge and amuse in equal proportions in a car carrying one native speaker (our seven year old son) and two adult learners of […]
I type this from my bed, right foot raised on several pillows. A moment’s inattention on unaccustomed high heels and uneven cobblestones turned my foot to the side and left me with a fracture at the base of my 5th metatarsal. Ouch. And arse. Not the start to the new year that I had been […]
One of the many things I love about Asturias is that vast swathes of deciduous woodland adorn so much of it. Beautiful to look at, especially in autumn when they put on an extended fiery show, they also provide wondrous places for hiking and great opportunities for foraging. And if you happen to be a […]
When you live in paradise the temptation can be to stay put but every now and then the urge to stray a little further afield still sneaks up on us. It doesn’t have to be very far, there are plenty of spectacular places to visit within just a couple of hours drive and, let’s face […]
As an expat; exiled from family and life-long friends, forever barred from the spontaneous ‘pop-round for a cup of tea and a chat’ or the casual catch-up in the street; Skype takes on a different level of importance. It’s not that the occasional buffering, freezing or simple malfunctioning becomes less annoying; if anything, it’s more so. […]
I remember how my mother used to scold me for ‘putting the heart crossways’ in her whenever I gave her a fright. While I *knew* what she meant, I didn’t really know what she meant until after I had my son. There is nothing quite like the knowledge that your child is in pain or […]
Somebody please shoot me if I threaten to buy another house that needs renovation. Truth is, I am not a lover of Do-It-Yourself. I am a lover of visualizing the end product, of adding value, of maximising potential. I am a great dreamer. But I am a lazy-arse when it comes to the reality of […]
