After having to cancel a planned mini-break in Bruges due to illness, I’m now settling down into near-hibernation mode for the winter, at least in terms of travel. Not that I have travelled much this year, with short breaks in Norfolk and Scotland. Even so, I’m glad to raise my metaphorical drawbridge and spend a few months on my home turf.
Physically, that is.
Despite my house already being full of books, with multiple shelves in every room, I can never resist the draw of secondhand books, whether from a dedicated seller of used books or from a charity shop. Whenever I go on holiday, whether for a long or short break, there seems to be an unwritten rule that I must return with at least one book for every day spent away from home.
My recent trip to visit my aunt in London resulted in a five-book haul from charity shops, plus one volume purchased from a purveyor of new books, to salve my conscience for buying so many secondhand. It’s important to support independent booksellers too. (That’s my excuse, anyway.) Continue reading “The Fascination of Secondhand Books”
I’ve been a hat addict all my life. In winter I’m usually seen in a beret, and in the summer a linen sunhat. People often say to me, “Ooh, I didn’t recognise you without a hat”.
Last month, the need to replace my faithful old black car – and the dearth of any more colourful ones in my price range – inspired me to write about car colours in my column for the July/August double edition of the Tetbury Advertiser.
When did British car buyers become so dreary? Shopping for a second-hand car to replace my defunct Fiat Panda, I’m astonished to find the choice of colour so limited.
A post about my eternal quest for the right work-life balance
When self-employed and working from home, it’s too easy to go to either of two extremes. You work flat out, failing to differentiate between weekdays and weekends, daytime and evening, or you drift about doing housework as a means of procrastination.
When I first started working from home, seven years before COVID made it commonplace, an old friend said to me:
How do you manage to get any work done? I’d be forever putting the laundry on or doing the ironing.
The fact that I gave up ironing around the same time – I possess neither an iron nor an ironing board – indicates which camp I belong to, as does the dust on my bookshelves.
