Justice for Gurkhas

Today a landmark test case challenging the deportation of ex Gurkha soldiers from Britain was won by five of the soldiers and a soldier’s widow. Now, up to 2000 more appeals against deportation could be heard. As the Gurkha base moved from Hong Kong to the UK in 1997, the UK government claimed that those who [...]

Early morning travel

Recently I was travelling to work at an early hour in the morning. I choose to start work early because then I finish mid-afternoon and get to spend some time with family or friends as well. Anyway, when I’m not rushing to catch my bus I quite enjoy going out at that time in the [...]

Eating bad things

I want to find someone who has felt the same as I felt recently. While at work recently, a friend did a bakery run and offered to fetch cakes and pasties for us all. Without thinking I ordered a french bread pizza and a chocolate covered, patisserie cream filled doughnut. When he returned I ate [...]

The dreaded lurgy has caught up with me!

I have succumbed.
For the past week I have watched as both of my children and my parents have suffered with a cold. Cheeky, in particular, has had it bad as he has been plagued (hmm, bad choice of word?) with a hacking cough. It has kept both him and us up for a few nights, [...]

Trying to pretend that we have four real seasons!

On the way home from school yesterday I was wearing sunglasses as it was so lovely and bright (my eyes couldn’t take the sunshine!). Anyway, I saw a tree which appeared to have gorgeous, almost New England-esque foliage against a deep blue sky and I stood staring at the beauty of it for a little [...]

Feeding the ducks

As it was such a nice day here in Cardiff yesterday we decided to take advantage of the sunshine and take a quick trip to Roath Park Lake. We had some crusts from loaves in the kitchen so we took them to feed to the birds. Well, it was comical – the birds are obviously [...]

Marmalade

In my fruit and veg box I have been receiving oranges and a lime over the past couple of weeks. I enjoy satsumas but I’ve never been the biggest fan of large eating oranges. So when I got these in my pick and mix box I decided that I should do something new and creative [...]

Organic vegetable box

A few weeks ago I started to think about my grocery shopping, and how I could do it in a way which both made me happier with my purchasing choices and saved me money. Welshpurpletree started me thinking more seriously about it when she wrote about shopping locally. Anyway, the long and short of it is [...]

Doesn’t it make you feel old?!

My elder son, Handsome, brought home some paperwork for me to fill in from school last week. They were the standard forms requiring information about his age, ethnicity and medical history etc, but there were some additional forms this time which I had to sign. Two in particular made me reflect about the changes which have [...]

Religion – public or private issue?

The start of this post is a reply that I wrote to a comment posted by Jalal Awan on my post relating to the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last weekend.
Jalal – I’m so sorry for the troubles which Pakistan is suffering. I wanted to reassure you that it is not the whole [...]