Journal

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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A Findhorn Farewell

31 July 2009

Recently I attended  a regular Findhorn ritual—a leaving meditation. This is not only an opportunity for the one leaving to say goodbye, it is also a conscious act of stepping out of one phase of life into another. It marks an important event and assists the one leaving to disconnect energetically from the passing phase and [...]

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Pipex Part 3: Just when you thinks it’s safe to come out…..

16 July 2009

You know those horror films when it’s five minutes to the end and all the creepy things have been destroyed and the good people are hugging in the  sunshine, and then…..the claw-like hand emerges from the freshly dug grave. Oh the shock… That was kind of my feeling when the post arrived yesterday. For those [...]

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Pipex Part 2: The story is over —with a little animal help

6 July 2009

A knock on the door —a heavy knock that means business, one that cannot be ignored—caught my attention this morning. This is it, I think, The Summons. Pipex have finally carried out their threat to take me to court. It turned out to be a Jehovah’s Witness who gave me a leaflet about how to [...]

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Pipex Part 1: A horrid tale of an evil phone service provider

3 July 2009

Sometimes you just have to rant—the soul demands it. My rant today concerns Pipex, a dreadful and possibly fraudulent telecommunications company. The general level of customer service is incredibly low in this industry and complaints about it are all too common but Pipex stands out from the crowd for it’s appalling standards. I must add [...]

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Clava Cairns: A place out of time

19 June 2009

Near Inverness, hidden away and difficult to find,  is a neolithic burial site known as the Clava Cairns. Located close to Culloden battlefield, it is bypassed by the many visitors heading for the more famous location. This is just as well. Clava is a place that should be experienced  in quiet solitude. The atmosphere is [...]

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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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