I remember the day of the Queen`s coronation. We had bought a black and white television. Our house in Bristol (in Tyndall Avenue, and yes Tyndall was a slave trader among other things…) had three rooms on the ground floor. Dining-room, lounge, and Daddy`s study. In the lounge my mother had set out plates of […]
This has been a hard week. Last Monday Jeff had surgery at Queens Square Neurological hospital. A cervical laminectomy is the name of his operation, which was carried out by a skilled surgeon. Discharged on Friday he has had – as predicted – really bad pain, and needs regular doses of painkillers of various kinds. […]
Monday March 29th. I haven`t watched Shtisel Season Three yet. Jeff and I decided to watch it, then discovered – after discussion with a family member, that we were in fact rewatching Season Two. In Jeff`s case understandable – he really hadn`t seen most of that, apparently. But I had (I think,) which was why […]
Don`t like to go on about it, but sales are up again on my memoir, M E and Me. I don`t exactly know how and why people suddenly come along who buy it. But I am sure, (and this applies to other things I have written) I should have kept an eye on the marketing […]
I decided some time ago that I am entitled to call myself a writer, a real one. If I produced a detailed CV I could demonstrate moments of real achievement – though not the kind of achievement that involves recognition, on more than a minuscule scale, of my work. I reflect on this particularly at […]
More than a month since I received the Covid vaccine. I notice, as we go for local walks, that people who stroll past us seem more relaxed than they have been for over a year. Few people, at least in this locality, wear masks any more. Add to that the fact that for the first […]
I switched on Bloodlands last night because I like watching James Nesbitt, though I don`t always love police dramas. To my shock, or rather not to my shock, but to my sadly lack of shock – here again was what I call that ubiquitous plot motif. Is it really a truth universally acknowledged that a […]
Having ideas is easy. Putting them into practice is less so. Recently I had a serious conversation with someone who had known several other people who had had M E. Even more than many of the supportive friends and relations who have all, in recent years been `converts` to the acceptance of the condition as […]
Attended a lovely zoom yesterday. Presented by the journal Jewish Renaissance, Executive Director Aviva Dautch chaired the evening which was to promote the current issue of the journal, and then to celebrate the publication in English of a hitherto undiscovered story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Editor Rebecca Taylor and Aviva Dautch make a dynamic team, […]
This last year I have been having regular skype meetings with my sisters in Israel. Judith lives on a moshav, a few kilometres from the border with Gaza. Naomi lives in Jerusalem, in the same block of flats, on the same floor in fact that our late parents lived – our father until his death […]