00:13am I wake up with terrible cramp in my left hamstring. Eventually I go back to sleep, but I’m woken at least three more times during the night with cramp in calves, hamstrings, and the top of my foot. In my sleep-deprived state I can’t work out what I need to do to stretch the [...]

At the end of next week, Alan and I are going to Provence for a little bit of last of the summer sun. There will be landscapes. There will be wine. There will be walking. There will be activity that falls outside the scope of this blog. And there will be no blogging.

Here’s the thing. [...]

Yesterday afternoon, I made a phone call. I called my Auntie May in Texas, who left Northumberland as a G.I. bride in the 1940s, and is celebrating her 90th birthday this weekend. She was a real beauty. Here she is, marrying Elmer in 1945.

She is also one of the loveliest people I know. She and [...]