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Showing posts from January, 2025

If You're Happy and You Know It.

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Whilst doing mundane jobs around the compound (uprooting brambles, re-grouting swimming pool slabs, stacking five stere of logs) my mind drifts away and I reflect on some of the highs and lows of life in the UK. Sometimes I will start laughing like a loon when I remember some of the more embarrassing incidents from my murky Thespian past. The local amateur dramatic society were holding auditions for their upcoming production of the King and I and my mum had informed us (me, my twin brother and sister) we were going to audition for one of the King's 106 children. None of us wanted to audition but our mum, who was a forceful woman, was adamant. Our audition prep was lacklustre to non existent. If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands was our chosen song, as we thought the choreography would take care of itself. On the big day we had barely sung Clap You Hands before we descended into uncontrollable giggles of embarrassment. The more we tried to hold it together the worse i...

In Sickness and in Health

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It was at her parents' diamond wedding anniversary in Scotland that Anna, my wife, contracted the horrible illness. I was all for a quarantine period on her return, but she said she wasn't prepared to live in the barn for two weeks...selfish. It started in the chest giving her a hacking cough, then went on a tour of Anna's body spending some time up her nose...causing it to run constantly, her limbs...making them ache, then back to her chest en route to her sinuses and jaw where her teeth kept throbbing and her eye sockets pulsated. It wasn't Covid as she did three tests (albeit out of date)...all negative. A 24 hour bug this was not, it lasted the best part of four weeks and she still isn't completely her normal, bubbly self. I was like the lady of the lamp popping Strepsils out of their foil pockets, filling hot water bottles, mopping her sweaty brow and trying to keep her buoyant with comforting words and singing to her in her darkest hours. I suggested we call...