Life at Corner Cottage, Braidwood
It rained all day yesterday – waves of driving droplets borne on strong gusts of chilly wind, ceasing for short periods and then whipping back through with a vengeance. It started early the previous evening and there was little respite for about 36 hours. Of course, this was a good thing for a region parched …
When priapic songster Sting, in his pretentious post-Police lite-jazz phase, sang that love is the seventh wave, he was of course referencing the myth that in the sea, waves travel in groups of seven, with the seventh being the largest. This idea comes up quite a lot in our culture. Henri Charriere, otherwise known as …
Ah language . . . without you we’d be as to the beasts, ravening in the wilderness, red in tooth and claw. Well, that and opposable thumbs, as we know. Just think of the word ‘pants’. Depending where you are in the world, this simple monosyllable can denote subtle but very significant things. In the …
Atop a ladder the other day, working on restoring the finial to the gable of the shed – I mean ‘studio’ – I couldn’t help but notice that the roof was in sore need of a lick of paint. It’s a nice corrugated-iron roof, with a gentle pitch, but it’s definitely seen better days: the …
Isambard Kingdom Brunel -- what an engineer. This bloke didn't design his way into the history books with just one innovation, or even two -- he just kept coming up with bold new material: tunnels, steel ships, suspension bridges. All brilliantly conceived and executed with due consideration of function driving form and such. It would …
It hasn’t escaped our notice that July has arrived, as inevitably as any such change. Our ex-colonial cousins in the USA are celebrating their anniversary as an independent nation with fireworks and gatherings unhindered by best social distancing practice, while in the UK the pubs are opening after months of lockdown. In Braidwood, we’re waiting …
Even my nearest and dearest wouldn’t say with a straight face that I have a good sense of fashion -- or indeed, any sense of fashion. In the past, let loose from the daily requirement to don a conservative suit and tie, I may well have struggled a bit to strike the right sartorial note …
Thinking a bit about the various variations of my chosen profession, writing, had me reminiscing a bit about a man I spent a lot of time with in the late ‘80s. Out of choice, initially, and then because he’d kind of moved in and couldn’t be evicted. The man was American poet E. E. Cummings …
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that despite our best efforts, one simple DIY job will generally spawn several more; when this principle is combined with the immutable law that no DIY job is as simple as it first appears, you have a rule or constant that indicates that a man’s work is never done. Worse, the …
It’s story time again. There hasn’t been much opportunity for messing around in the garden or painting in the house, as I’m knocking out a bit of what’s popularly known as ‘content’ in the world of marketing and such. This involves a lot of sitting in my shed – sorry, ‘studio’ – staring at the …
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