My small town has recently welcomed a Syrian refugee family. Soon after their arrival, the newspaper ran a picture of the mom, dad and their three young children playing in the local park. It was an ordinary, yet also extraordinary scene. Our new neighbours have spent...
If you read my blog regularly, you know that when my daughter, English Rose, and I moved to Canada from England in July 2015, we left a very important person behind. For the past fourteen months, my husband, Tech Guy, has remained in England, working to support our...
“You’re the writer. Spin it.” I didn’t appreciate it then, but those words, spoken by a sales guy with a swagger, a bespoke suit, and a Porsche, marked a defining moment in my life. Although I’d dabbled in fiction, I wasn’t writing it...
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...
We had a trio of birthdays in my family this week. My mother-in-law, a cousin and my own.As English Rose remarked with all the sensitivity of an almost teen, I’m getting “old.” When I raised an eyebrow, she quickly amended it to “older” but the...
