General

Halloween is My Favourite Day

29 October 2009

I love Halloween. As a child it was my favourite time apart from Christmas and in some ways it still is. It was exciting dressing up and going out in the night with a group of other kids, collecting tons of repulsive sweets that would rot our teeth. (If Candy Corn isn’t the work of [...]

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Discovering my Grandfather: a piece of Russian history

31 August 2009

Some years ago I lived near Cambridge in a wonderful flat that was the top floor of a large Georgian house. The owners, Terrence and Iris Armstrong, were friends as well as landlords and I was often invited to Sunday lunch which I enjoyed since they almost always had interesting guests. One time they particularly wanted [...]

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Parking and the Kindness of Strangers

10 August 2009

Unlike Blanche DuBois I do not depend on the kindness of strangers but when it comes to me I feel restored in my spirit. I experienced kindness just the other day when I had the misfortune to scrape the bumper of another car while trying to park near my home. My first hope was that [...]

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You Have to Start Somewhere

2 June 2009

This is the very first post in my very new blog. I was hoping to do this yesterday. June 1 is my birthday and if I had done it then,  my blog and I would have the same birthday and that would be somehow meaningful and aproppriate. It didn’t happen that way. Events and ongoing [...]

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