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Floods And Frosts In The English Winter
The new year period trudges by and the dawning of 2024 passes with no great celebration, Michaela’s cough has turned out to be a nasty little chest infection which has taken a proper grip. As we watch London’s new year fireworks on the TV, we muse on the fact that we saw in 2023 in Pedasi in Panama and the previous year in La Fortuna, Costa Rica, this time it’s a matter of grabbing a GP appointment and snaring a dose of antibiotics. With the cough still barking but the spirit enjoying a measure of medically induced uplift, we head to Northamptonshire for my granddaughter’s third birthday party where River…
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What Do We Miss About Home?
Funnily enough, it’s not usually the very first pint of English ale which goes down a treat and makes me realise what I’ve been missing: no, it’s more often than not a few days after we’ve returned and we’re now settled in a pub somewhere, absorbed in chatter whilst quaffing beer and scoffing peanuts and saying to ourselves, “yeah, this feels good”. That’s the moment. These days though, we don’t miss much about home when we travel, and it’s with a little sadness that we say we don’t miss too much about England either. Since we left these shores on our first post-retirement adventure in January 2020 we’ve spent over…
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Dry January Just Gets Harder
It’s more difficult for me to do dry January than it is for most people. I should explain. You see, as a younger adult, I spent many years dealing with the emotional trauma of being an Olympic athlete trapped in a beer drinker’s body. I overcame that burden with a new year resolution somewhere around 2002 to never again visit a gym: a resolution that I am proud to have maintained ever since. It was my father who introduced me to beer when I was a teenager, in fact I celebrated my 18th birthday in our local pub, with Dad and other regulars, three years in a row in the…
