This week, a moving van arrived at my home. It brought a china cabinet that’s been in my mother’s family since the mid-nineteenth century.In the furniture world, the cabinet is a stately dowager duchess or grizzled elder statesman. Made of solid wood, it...
On 18 July 2015 English Rose and I landed in Toronto on an Aer Lingus flight from London via Dublin. I was on my way home, but English Rose had left the only home she’d ever known.Missing EnglandOne year later, I still miss the gentle English mist, fish and...
It’s now six months since I left England to start a new life in Canada. As much as I love my new home and have put down roots here, I also find myself reflecting on what I miss about the place I left behind.Living in an old countryI live in rural eastern...
I lost a special member of my family this week, and my last living link with a world that’s now vanished. I blogged about Cousin Mary in August 2014 at the centenary of the start of the First World War. Born in May 1910, Mary didn’t remember the start of that...
I write about small towns. Both my parents came from small towns, and I spent much of my childhood visiting family and friends in small communities. Since August, though, I’ve lived in a small town. It’s a place where my roots run deep but, like every...
