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April Fools’ Day
It’s that jolly japes day when you can never be quite sure if what you’ve seen or heard is actually true. April Fools’ Day was the date you’d love with a passion as a child because it meant you could play tricks on your parents or siblings with impunity, at least until noon. After midday,…
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Springing forward
There was a real feeling of spring in the air last weekend. Bees were buzzing, birds sang their little hearts out and everything in the garden looked really lovely. Even the Spanish bluebells were giving it their all, their last hurrah and not realising I was about to dig out the interloping blighters. In the…
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Lady Day
It’s Lady Day today and also my brother’s birthday. Happy birthday, bro! As the child of tenant farmers, it was always a date ingrained in my head. It’s the date when rent was due, the date when farm tenancies were renewed or smallholdings changed hands. In the agricultural year, it’s a quarter day, the others…
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March book reviews
A standout book this month, a pretty good one and two stinkers. I won’t be reviewing that last pair here – they have a connection in that they are just far too long. I don’t mind 600 pages when the story and characters are compelling but get bored when the writer takes ages to get…
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Today is World Poetry Day
Years ago, I was shortlisted for a poem in the internationally-acclaimed Bridport Prize competition. To be honest, it wasn’t very good but it was a pleasing accomplishment because poems aren’t really my thing. This is probably because, despite studying them quite closely, I find them tricky to analyse, decipher and I always get a bit…
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Bouncing into spring
When does spring begin? It’s so confusing, even when you look it up, because there are different ‘types’ of spring – meteorological spring, astronomical spring and even phenological spring. Who knew? Meteorological spring is already here. It began on 1 March, following the tried and tested formula of three months per season – so December,…
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Maddie Grigg 