The news item about Google and Income Tax, urged me to blog what I have been wondering if I dare write for some time now. Is income tax the last taboo? We were told never to discuss religion or politics. The subject of death has been taboo. Homosexuality was not accepted until recently… Taxation is […]
All Over By Christmas
…or ‘No Room at the Inn’. It was Christmas and I was seventeen. My father managed a newsagents’ shop which we lived above, and which was tied into the property. There were six of us, Mum and Dad and we four children. The owner sold up and the new owner decided they wanted to live there. We […]
Have a Good Time
The phrases ‘enjoy yourself’ and ‘have a good time’ have always baffled and, on some occasions, actually annoyed me. ‘Having a good time’ is not the same concept for everyone. Not everyone goes out to enjoy themselves in the same way, and we might well be relieved at that fact. There is an assumption, I […]
Only the River
Only the River Sweet Thames run softly, for I sing not loud or long… I am not a scenery girl, or landscapes or country. More an ‘in the head girl’ – poems and stuff, as with the Spenser quotation above. It was while at Twickenham County, the girls’ grammar school (the building in Clifden […]
The Wrong Burrow
My son was born in our house, in Bushy Park Road. His Christian names are Lindsay James. He was born early Saturday morning, and soon after he was delivered, followed shortly by our daily paper – the Surrey Comet. On the back of the Comet that day, on the sports page, was an article entitled ‘BUMPER […]