Two puzzles
Category: STORYTELLING
Community, Wonder
featuring INDIAN FUTURES
I stand on the platform. A few early risers have already taken their places.
The same people every week. The blonde woman supporting herself on the raised stone wall. The smartly dressed man by the bench, phone light flickering on his face. Another woman greeting a neighbour. Continue reading “Community, Wonder”
Iced Christmas Cake
featuring #Change This Christmas
Do you remember the first time you tasted chocolate? Or beer? Or cake?
I remember the first time I tried icing on a cake. I was 24 years old and had recently started working at the YMCA.
Continue reading “Iced Christmas Cake”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.
Our Christmas tradition
featuring #TAKE YOUR SEAT
We have a Christmas tradition in our household.
We decorate the tree close to Christmas. It is hard work to resist the temptation to buy a Christmas tree and dress it in late November, together with everybody else, but we generally (though reluctantly) manage it. Continue reading “Our Christmas tradition”
Round ocean pebbles
featuring SOUTH EAST CANCER CENTRE
Did you know London was once covered by the ocean?
And did you also know that you can still see the living proof of the seas on the London Green Belt? I did not. Continue reading “Round ocean pebbles”
Five Christmas stories
I was asked, a few days ago, what was the best Christmas present I had ever received.
The coat
featuring WRAP UP LONDON
I arrived in Britain in the summer, fifteen years ago.
I had with me one photo album, one diary, pens, a couple of books, a Walkman (do you remember those?), my university diploma and a very small wardrobe of mainly tops and bottoms. The only pair of shoes I had thought of taking was on me and it lasted a whole year. I still retain wonderful memories – my best ever shoes!
Leftover Lunch
‘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.
On how I met my husband
featuring #IAMWHOLE
As a teenager, I was a recluse. I read – a lot, played Atari on my brand new home computer (do you remember those two-dimensional computer games that would take an hour to load up, once a cassette would be inserted into the separate player?).
I enjoyed music. I methodically listened to my dad’s entire record collection and later on played some of those pieces (badly) on our upright piano.