viola's people watching blog
I kept asking myself what I wanted to send out, whatever for and to whom. All the sites for starting up a blog had two little golden nuggets of advice,` be consistent in what you want to write about and’ I’m guessing what they mean is don’t jump about like […]
I read an article in The Guardian just after New Year, about making New Year resolutions. The writer…I don’t remember his name…said he never makes such resolutions because…the I that has to execute the resolutions refuses to take orders from the I who made them. I stopped calling them resolutions […]
Brussels was cold and teeth chattering and we walked around with frozen faces and numb noses and other frigid extremities. But the city was busy and bustling…streets strung with Christmas lights, shops windows displaying sleek tailored garments on long-legged mannequins and coffee shops, jam-packed and bursting at the seams. Brussels […]
I had been stuck in the doldrums of zero motivation and the garden had been beckoning me. After our exceptionally hot and dry weather the garden looked miserable. I had intended to trim back the hydrangeas and cut off the woody branches from the roses and prune the herb bushes […]
A few weeks ago Yiannis walked in and announced that we were invited to the 50th anniversary of the founding of this company that produced specialised building materials. It would be in Athens and they would be putting us up in a 5 star hotel and the whole shindig would […]
I know avid planners, people who research and plan their holidays, months or even a year in advance…and when the holiday is over, before they can even unpack or wriggle and stretch their tired toes, they’re already talking about the next holiday. I would say to these breed of individuals…`Good […]
Louise flew in with her parents mid-July with the throngs of tourists. She looked at us and smiled, an uncertain smile, at these two unyoung people that she recognised but couldn’t quite trust. She kept looking around for her parents to make sure they wouldn’t leave her with us. But […]
A couple of weeks ago I was ruminating on my pension. It was going into an account that we had no card to access. Times have changed as you know my friends, when you could go to the bank with your little book and withdraw money. Now you need a […]
We’ve been hoarding an unbelievable amount of stuff from clothes and shoes to magazines and books and makeup and gifts of lipsticks and vials of perfumes and bits and bobs and odds and sods that were blocking the free flow of all this cosmic energy. I read somewhere that if […]
Do you remember in one of my previous posts how I cautioned against swaggering remarks and how my old uncle used to say that someone up there was always listening in and would have the last laugh on us? Well, I have yet another confession to make. I used to […]
I came to certain crossroads in my life, my cooking life, when I peered into the cookie jar and found only a couple of crumbs from the almond biscuits from Marks and Spenser’s. I couldn’t run out and get more because the store was in the middle of town and […]