As the 187th annual Phuket Vegetarian Festival approaches, I remember when I first experienced it shortly after our arrival last year. It happens each year (hence the ‘annual’ moniker), during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar. This year it will be October 14-23. It was quite an eye opener for me. My friend … Read more
October is autumn in Creuse, our part of central France. September is still summer, and November is when winter starts, generally very enthusiastically on the first day, so that give us just the thirty-one days of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The fruitfulness is a little less fruitful than in the last couple of years. There … Read more
I sometimes wonder what I used to do with all the spare time I had in England, as everything must have been so much easier when I was there. I know I was up early every morning with a two hour commute to work and back, and now I just walk from the bedroom to … Read more
Canadian and British homes are worlds apart in terms of style and layout. Before moving to Canada, my husband and I renovated and extended our 1930’s UK property, stripping the interior – re-plastering, re-plumbing and re-wiring. It was a major undertaking; six months of dust and noise made possible in equal measure by vast amounts … Read more
Machismo manifests in different ways. Sometimes it’s outright sexism – not letting your wife work, loudly demanding your breakfast, cheating on her with prostitutes. Sometimes it’s a societal problem, like lower salaries and poorer job prospects for women. Sometimes it’s far worse, abuse. Or sometimes it means that a 28-year-old daughter still lives with her … Read more
The more we (Linda and I) think about an emergency bolthole to escape a worldwide economic collapse, the more we wonder if we’re not already living in it. (The bolthole, that is: not the collapse!) One’s home is always familiar territory, isn’t it? We know who to go to for goods and services of every … Read more
I was recently asked whether or not I thought time passed more quickly in New Zealand than anywhere else. The question threw me. No one has ever asked me that before. My answer was no, but also yes, and then “it depends”. When we moved here initially, I thought that time crawled by. Looking back, … Read more
No matter how long you’re an expat, there are certain things that you’ll just never get used to. Having lived in the States for twenty-two years now, you’d think that most things would be second nature to me. I have embraced baseball, I understand the school system, I can even say “bay-zil” without cringing, (although … Read more
I’ve just said goodbye to my parents who have been with me for a month. I love that they stay a month—now that they’re retired they can do that and it makes the visit so much easier, almost like they’re living just next door and I can pop by and see them whenever. That’s what … Read more
I’ve discovered a new meaning of the formula e=mc2 – exhaustion equals multiple countries squared. As we wrap up our summer in Canada I look back at a wonderful two and a half months of beautiful weather in gorgeous surroundings of Northern Ontario, a smattering of guests (both family and friends) and on the last … Read more