Home! Where my Berry ancestors once lived. Researching family history is a minefield for the novice and the unprepared. This lesson was quickly learned with my first foray into searching the archives in the hope of finding clues to my lately discovered Welsh ancestry. To contact any Public Records Office… Continue reading

Where will it all end? When will the unwanted guardians who loom over everything we do give us our lives back? Today we have been warned of the health hazards in that time-honoured childhood pleasure of licking the bowl at cake-making time. Gawd help us. If that were so, I… Continue reading

Is there anyone out there who is not suffering from a complaint, an allergy, a put-down, a slight, oppression, depression, stress (usually self-inflicted), sidelining or some feeling of inadequacy or discrimination? There is almost a daily queue to voice a complaint of being attacked or assaulted mentally or emotionally. When analysed, the allegations seem to be more of a slight or minor insult rather than anything truly major. Something said in the heat of the moment perhaps.  The sort of thing that once would have been answered with an equally sharp rebuke or, better still, by a not-bothered shrug of… Continue reading