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Boredom, ennui, la noia, langeweile?
“What is boredom? It is when there is simultaneously too much and not enough.” Jean-Paul Sartre On the Home page of this blog I proudly...
Oct 21, 2022
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Still life
"simple, wholesome food standing on a sill or held in air by the hand of a geometer and poet adept at ordering a world of marvels: did he...
Oct 14, 2022
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Why do we celebrate birthdays?
"There was a star danced, and under that was I born." William Shakespeare Birthdays are a time to celebrate, to party. Right? And here...
Oct 12, 2022
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The kitchen dilemma
"Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen." Alfred Hitchcock We are trying to find a new home. Our house is lovely and easy to...
Oct 4, 2022
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Washing up
"until you turn them on, a dishwasher is just a cupboard you hide the mess in, it’s still a very handy cupboard." Jay Rayner The...
Sep 26, 2022
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Now what?
“Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.” Eckhart Tolle Is this what holidays are...
Sep 23, 2022
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Holiday's end
"Summer has slowly slipped away like honey falling from a spoon." Nigel Slater How I wish I could write such a sentence. Part one For the...
Sep 21, 2022
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Spontaneity requires organisation
"Spontaneity has long been one of my favourite ingredients in the kitchen" Nigel Slater This is my older son, many, many years ago on the...
Sep 9, 2022
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The guilty satisfaction of empty things
By things I mean jars, bottles, packets, tins ... all the things containing all the consumables you use in your lifetime. By...
Aug 29, 2022
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Random thoughts on an ordinary day
“Whatever — the soup is getting cold." [Last sentence of a mathematical theorem in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook, 1518]” Leonardo da...
Aug 26, 2022
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So much to see, do, experience ... always
“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.” Tom Robbins Yes it's another painting from my desk diary. It's called...
Aug 23, 2022
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Distant memories - cousins and food
“Ponder well on this point: the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a more or less tangible link, with some memory of the...
Aug 7, 2022
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A quickie on baskets
"A glass pitcher, a wicker basket, a tunic of coarse cloth. Their beauty is inseparable from their function. Handicrafts belong to a...
Aug 5, 2022
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LOVE - the secret ingredient - really?
"spread love through cooking" Mary Frances This was going to be purely about a website - in my foodie website/blog occasional series. ...
Aug 3, 2022
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Precious - in what sense?
A Simple Dish of Potato Cooked in the Earth In Which It Was Grown The photograph is of a dish devised by Ben Shewry in his Attica...
Jul 22, 2022
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Renewal
"Astonish me in the morning!" Tyrone Guthrie As you know, as well as writing this blog, to entertain myself I take photographs as I...
Jul 10, 2022
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When the background is the foreground
This is today's Impressionist desk diary picture from the Met. It is by Edouard Vuillard and is called MIsia at the piano. It was...
Jun 13, 2022
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A moment in time - on beauty
"Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a...
Jun 7, 2022
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A tale of two Junes
"How did it get so late so soon? It's night before its afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flown....
Jun 1, 2022
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An ordinary day
"Subtly, in the little ways, joy has been leaking out of our lives. The small pleasures of the ordinary day seem almost contemptible, and...
May 26, 2022
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