This has been one hell of a few days. First, because my husband who, until he got sick never realised so many people love him, has been cherished and nourished night after night by friends who kindly invited us to eat. We have been feted by three consecutive Pie Crust Queens. Friday was strawberry pie, Saturday was apple pie with…

This was the week I heard the welcome news that not only can my husband’s condition be treated with neuro-surgery, it can be done in a minimally invasive way at a hospital not far from here. I’m grateful for the diagnosis and grateful for the wonders of modern surgery. I’m not so grateful for the Bermuda Triangle of Radio Silence I now…

My husband was admitted to hospital today, in preparation for surgery later in the week. It’s one of those brand new hospitals that have a shopping mall and a palm-tree atrium, but not, apparently, any nurses. It hadn’t occurred to me that patients might be expected to provide their own towels, and towards the end of visiting time…

 An interesting conversation yesterday with a breed as rare as the white rhinoceros: a self-deprecating Italian. Gaspare was asking me about my conversion to Orthodoxy twelve years ago and whether one gets to choose one’s own new Orthodox name. Answer, yes. And in my case it was a very easy choice because Catherine of Alexandria’s feast day…

  Yesterday we had a kind of upper crust yard sale of women’s clothes. It was one of our fund-raisers for next January’s theatrical production, and it turned into quite a study of human nature. First, there were all those guys who felt left out. As we pointed out, there’s nothing to stop them putting on their own…

I rise snuffling and hacking from my sickbed only long enough to report the arrival of my newest granddaughter, who has feet like plates of meat and hands like Rachmaninov but is otherwise tiny, elfin and good enough to eat. I’d forgotten how easy it is to spend hours just watching a newborn baby shuffle through its deck of facial expressions.…

A quick post before I fly off to the UK to meet my newest grand-daughter, now four days old and still without a name. She has arrived just as England attains a new level of politically correct idiocy in what I’ll call the Golliwog Incident. Any Brit over the age of 50 has a golliwog in their past. They were…

                                                                 As my regular reader knows, I’m not a very political animal but once in a while something gets my goat and this morning there it was: a sculptured tribute to the journalist who threw a shoe at George Bush.  It was inevitable that Mr Al-Zaidi would become an overnight celebrity because that’s how childish the news…

I just spent the last half hour preparing a loaf of banana bread, on the basis that it would be a crime to throw away three perfectly good but over-ripe bananas. By the time you’ve added the cost of the other ingredients, the gas for the oven and the woman-hours, I agree I probably should just have…