The potato and the stone

It was a hot summer’s day. It always is, if it’s school’s sports day. Friday, last week of June.

It was a hot summer’s day, it was school sports day, 8am and no school lunch. Or rather picnic lunch.

It was a hot summer’s day, school sports day, 8am, no picnic prepared – no problem. I was going to attend the day, and bring the picnic lunch with me.

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A Suspended Christmas

a suspended christmas

featuring SELFISH MOTHER and Save the Children

If you do not live in the United Kingdom, then grab a seat! This post requires an explanation.

A Christmas jumper is ‘a top pulled over the head to cover the torso, themed with a Christmas or winter-style design. Save the Children UK encourage people to wear a Christmas jumper on a specific day in December (it’s the 14th this year) and raise money for the charity. Most people wear Christmas jumpers outside of that one day, during Advent and Christmas.

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Leftover Lunch

dandelion

‘Maybe you should just leave it for a few more days, and it would exit the lunchbox on its own. Imagine, the lunchbox monster escapes and you would have so much less washing up to do.’

‘It’ is the leftover lunch that is awaiting, unopened, on the school rack. It was abandoned since Friday, so it had a whole weekend to work its way into life.

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On clouds … and how to keep warm in winter

If someone asked you how many types of clouds there were, what would your answer be?

My uncle, forever the erudite, would list clouds in their Latin names: cirrostratus, altostratus, stratocumulus; he might say something about the troposphere. My youngest daughter would ignore the question altogether and would quiz me on the lack of planes and helicopters in the sky.

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On that birth story I never wrote down

I have kept a journal ever since I learnt how to write. I wrote a PhD, I write a weekly blog.

I have hand written letters to my best friend ever since I could remember.

I wrote my first daughter‘s birth story minute by minute, stage by stage.

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The Book in the Bag

featuring INDIAN FUTURES

‘I used to take our cow out to the field every morning after breakfast. Once I was ready, I would take it by the chain, a book in my bag. We stopped at the field next to ours, four kilometres away from our house. It was 1955 or thereabouts. I must have been nine or ten.

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