Ahem Ella and Sam were formally wed on 24th August in Wadhurst Castle in East…
Ahem, The simple scoreline did not truly reflect the embroiled imbroglio of the football match.…
The uncertain weather continued during the first half of the month, ruining the plans of…
Our amazing dog Bonnie, possibly a Bedlington Whippet, or maybe a small Schnauzer Lurcher, born…
Ahem, A few days after I had, with all due ceremony, carefully poured twenty bright…
Ahem, Muttley was one of my childhood heroes (along with Rolf Harris). As an infant…
Ahem, On the ninth day of the month, I travelled to meet my sister-in-law Julia…
Ahem, Jurrat, Jessie, and Jaxon (J3) came to Uckfield for a Sunday roast on their…
Ahem, Our first several days in our new house, perhaps predictably, were at once disorienting,…
Ahem, It was night in the cold northern foothills of Dartmoor. The country sky was…
Ahem, My strongest memories of the god- or science-inspired extremes of the British weather have…
Ahem, La Hune, our family house in south-west France, looks out proud and far across…
Ahem, “We’re on the home stretch” observed my great-niece Julia-Rose reassuringly as I clambered up…
Ahem, Jessie, our first-born daughter, and Jurrat, our first son-in-law, made their memorable vows to…
Ahem Jessie and Jurrat (J2) were legally married at Brighton registry office on 17th June.…
Ahem, Rain fell in solid chapters and the sun shone in free verse through the…
Ahem, The Easter weekend saw the family gathered to hunt for prosecco and chocolate. A…
Ahem, For over 60 years of my life I have been Lionel. But all this…
Ahem, Alli and I went to Brussels on the Eurostar from St Pancras to visit…
Ahem, The atrocious rain in the first half of January seemed like a judgment of…
Ahem, It’s been a Football World Cup month, and therefore a danger once again to…
Ahem Our daughter Ella and her partner Sam have become engaged to be married, after…
Ahem The month featured a lot of wind-sweeping wettish rain, streaming curtain-sleeves large and long.…
Ahem The month started with a family visit to Southampton to watch cricket in its…
Ahem Laurie, my father-in-law, died just a week ago. He was a close friend before…
Ahem The weather this past month has been ridiculous even by English standards, a confusing…
Ahem, La Hune, our long-neglected house in south west France, was my location and work-place…
Ahem Ant and Susanne, the magnificent Miles from Luxembourg, arrived at Broad Oaks on their…
Ahem Our dogs have not been well. Both Bonnie and Max have suffered from stomach…
Ahem A small section of the road outside the house was resurfaced one day without…
Ahem The year started new-pin-brightly, with a hangover-free park run on a mild New Year’s…
Ahem On 5th December, Jurrat knelt in the autumn leaves before our first-born daughter Jessie…
Ahem My previous one-scener blue moon trips to London have now turned into weekly or…
Ahem So they want to make me go to rehab, I said yeah yeah yeah?…
Ahem, By general agreement Alli’s birthday this year was more of a birtholiday. We had…
Ahem Sometimes I run out of patience and often I run out of things to…
Ahem I’m sure that I’m the last person in Little Britain to have noticed that…
Ahem My vegetables are being pilfered and pillaged. Every time I go to the garden,…
Ahem A lot of things happened on Mayday, as they should. In medieval England, it…
Ahem Easter gave us an opportunity to use the garden for a childish grown-up family…
Ahem We’ve been thinking of renting a cottage on the Isle of Wight, if it’s…
Ahem The extreme weather in the first half of the month kept us all more…
Ahem The turn of the year did not witness many resolutions, still less successful ones.…
Ahem No sooner had Gwen arrived back from York than we drove together to the…
Ahem With a month of rain interrupted by intermittent leafy days daubed in autumnal gold,…
Ahem They’re out to get me. Wherever I go these days outside the UK I…
Ahem The month started when families were still getting used to cautious re-uniting; when the…
Ahem Fresh blackberries were aplenty (try saying that five times very quickly) in the fields…
Ahem While many unlocked themselves and stumbled up and out, blinking rapidly into the modern…
Ahem We have seen our daughters together thrice this month, the first time with their…
Ahem Jessie’s 29th birthday was celebrated on Europe Day with great success and aplomb. The…
Ahem The reduction of nearly all UK news down to updates on Covid 19 and…
Ahem, The comedy highlight of a month already replete with unintentional comedy and tragedy foretold…
Ahem The Stanbrook family, especially on my brother Clive’s side, continues to expand vertiginously, while…
Ahem I have spent the month picking up bits and pieces in all sorts of…
Ahem I shall never forget the date of 12 December 1998. It was one of…
Ahem Alli’s difficult and frustrating work selling our house in Leymen has finished with the…
Ahem Recently I described a visit to a traditional healer who had diagnosed an ailment…
Ahem I had a party at my house one night and my mobile phone must…
Ahem A friend of mine decided to visit a traditional healer in order to remedy…
Ahem The idea of a leisurely tour of southern middle England took shape after I…
Ahem Ramadan ended in thunderstorms and rain, which took some lives and left more without…
Ahem Modern global media seems to destroy more than it creates. In Africa, cable TV…
Ahem At work, I have been grappling with an administration that had difficulties in comprehending…
Ahem The annual reception for the staff of the African Development Bank provided a suitable…
Ahem Abidjan is crammed with signs. From huge hoardings for big brands to rickety little…
Ahem In Basel’s Euroairport the same broadcast security warning in English has been running for…
Ahem The temperature around me dropped a full thirty degrees when I returned from Abidjan…
Ahem While I and my colleagues at the Bank are paid good salaries, even by…
Ahem There are no second hand markets in Abidjan: no Petticoat Lanes or Portobello Roads.…
Ahem As Europe falls into yellow leafswirl, brown mulch and bright red bonfires, search-lit by…
Ahem The curse of Shango, Yoruba God of thunder and lightning, is invoked against the…
Ahem A family from France are staying for a few weeks. They introduced a cheerful,…
Ahem The process of moving into my new home, a villa in a half-gated lane…
Ahem After the strong and positive family emotions around my brother Clive’s funeral, I had…
Ahem To be honest, my brother Clive and I were too far apart in age…
Ahem I am growing very wary of the word “smart”. Never dependable or stable, the…
Ahem Every morning and every evening over a million straw-coloured fruit bats make the flipflop-flapping…
Ahem To secure approval from the family, a box packed with whisky, rum, gin, champagne…
Ahem My last few days of the year at work saw a definite improvement in…
Ahem The rainy season here in the Cote d’Ivoire should have finished in October at…
Ahem Some weeks ago while in France, I was dragging an old double mattress out…
Ahem Sailing and I have never been close. My brother was the sailor of the…
Ahem I have been to the Royaume Congo, a famous nightclub close to where I…
Ahem, A calmer period followed the frenetic, cloud-bursting month of June, and the weather was…
Ahem I’ve been busy. My mother occasionally used to say that there was “no rest…
Ahem While I have been very comfortable over the last five months in my tiny…
Ahem, With all the excitement of Alli’s visit at the end of last month, which…
Ahem, Late in the evening before my 60th birthday I was sitting morosely in my…
Ahem In Cote d’Ivoire there are several different economies that co-exist but are segregated. The…
Ahem New Year’s Day saw my return journey to Abidjan, and having failed to sleep…
Ahem I flew home to France on a circuitous route to Basel from Abidjan after…
Ahem I drove to the UK to visit my friends John and Jan as well…
Ahem The mornings and evenings are becoming increasingly colder, measured by the increasing number of…
Ahem A brilliant idea jump-started September: a swim in the Rhein. After the warm late…
Ahem Our increasingly populous clan is ever more global. A family wedding might in the…
Ahem The expression “making hay while the sun shines” was first recorded in English usage…
Ahem When Alli and Gwen were enjoying Venice for a few days together earlier in…
Ahem Taking advantage of Jessie’s European stay following her London Marathon efforts last month, Alli…
Ahem, Gwen arrived back in Basel after spending a few days in Brighton with her…
Ahem, With driving rain, padding fog, feathery snow drifts and hard bouncing hail just in…
Ahem The first of my Get Writing “MeetUps” in Basel, intended to inspire local writers…
Ahem The month of Janus, the god of beginning, transition, doorways and archways, was typically…
Ahem, In the annual French Letter Hunters’ Dinner at the beginning of the month, after…
Ahem, Bulbous fists of mist gripped our village for several mornings in a row, burned…
Ahem We are in full fall. The legendary colours of autumn in Alsace have reappeared…
Ahem, I returned to Basel in a rejuvenated Galahad on the last weekend of the…
Ahem, Concerned about over-staying my Latin welcome with the eternally hospitable Pickup Tennysons of Olgiata,…
Ahem I divided the month of July between working in Rome and holidaying in South…
Ahem Leymen’s acknowledged eminence grise of local village history, Max Wyss, lives within a stone’s…
Ahem There was a rare and immediately memorable Stanbrook family gathering this month in London…
Ahem I have been gazing out across a moist flower-bordered billiard-table lawn, blurred through the…
Ahem We went to a restaurant in Huningue, Autour de la table, with the Jarvises…
Ahem The couple renting our house in the south west of France broke the rental…
Ahem We returned from the warm climes of New Zealand to the cross-field Sundgau swoosh…
Ahem The fortnight before our extended Christmas vacation in New Zealand was backpacked with incident…
Ahem It was great to welcome Ella and Sam here for a few days. They…
Ahem It’s all happening here in the southern Sundgau. One cat-black night was disturbed at…
Ahem I was looking northwest across Basel from the Hinterhof Dachterrasse, after being prompted to…
Ahem There was a pleasing symmetry to this month as it was precisely bookended by…
Ahem The month started cold and windy when Ella, accompanied by four of her university…
Ahem When I work from home my window on the world overlooks the meadow facing…
Ahem, My parents-in-law Laurie and Kay paid us an extended visit on their way back…
Ahem A complicated month was this. Normally, claims on my time and attention have arranged…
Ahem, The first days of the month saw me chasing around town in vicious and…
Ahem, The uncertain winter continues. Every morning there is uncertainty about whether the mist will…
Ahem After our carrousel Christmas, the New Year started quietly and modestly. Jessie and I…
Ahem The morning wreaths of mist could not conceal the huge weather variations throughout the…
Ahem November is the most useful month of the year. It gets used a lot.…
Ahem Marrakech is very bamboozling. The local compass somehow swings around every few minutes, with…
Ahem One of the many drawbacks of living in a house full of women (where…
Ahem The intensity of our 2013 holiday continued to streak across the summer like the…
Ahem I can announce that I have crossed two major items off my imaginary personal…
Ahem Some disenchanted summer has pitched up with light blue skies, greyish clouds, hawks spiralling…
Ahem The month was kicked off in merry style at 6am in damp and swirling…
Ahem Comrades, I have made a striking yet politically disappointing discovery. Our cousins the hens,…
Ahem I travelled to England for the weekend to see my earliest extant friend Charlie,…
Ahem From my window, I see building work in progress on two of the three…
Ahem The early days of the year slung me down low with a mystery virus…
Ahem This hurtling year crashed to its conclusion amidst a welter of car problems, last-minute…
Ahem After an evanescent snow white weekend at the tail-end of October, the first week…
Ahem For those interested I proffer a work update. I am drafting, editing and…
Ahem Alli’s 50th birthday took place amid a maelstrom of memorable events and in…
Ahem We shared the final days of our holiday at La Hune with our Belgian…
Ahem There are some smells in daily rural life that can only be described as…
Ahem Ella has landed her first job in journalism, getting selected as the music…
Ahem The first weeks of the month afforded few favors to those who regard…
Ahem There has been a revolution in our household. Since I gave Alli an…
Ahem In these partially wooded fields of this corner of the Alsace on a…
Ahem Snow fell repeatedly on snow; frosty wind moaned; the ground was iron and the…
Ahem We continued to have extreme weather with hurricane force gales blowing a trail of…
Ahem I was dreading my visit to the village Post Office to get stamps for…
Ahem The colors of this year’s Fall together with four weeks of bright November daytime…
Ahem, The Swiss are well organized in most things but, inexplicably, they are terrible at…
Ahem It was party time at Rue de la Scierie as I invited my best…
Ahem Rough winds and rain were strafing the bean-poles when we returned home from torch-dry…
Ahem July has been an exciting month for all sorts of different reasons, but notable…
Ahem Ella graduated from school at the beginning of the month in a beneficent blaze…
Ahem A man from the mairie (local council) knocked on our door one day and…
Ahem March is a great month, known in Finland as maaliskuu, the “earthy” month when…
Ahem This month turns out to have been one of the most sociable in all…
Ahem When my father was in Rome for a few days during his active RAF…
Ahem Alli’s cooking abilities have attained a higher level of quality than ever before. On…
Ahem I miss not having a proper bonfire night, and regret that Halloween spreads itself…
Ahem As yet another year shoots across the failing sky at Samhain without so much…
Ahem This was a month of beauty and grace. Prime among the examples was the…
Ahem I have an admission. I live two lives; I have two loves. In real…
Ahem Ella’s 17th birthday took place on the 20th, and we celebrated by having dinner…
Ahem “There are more greenhouse gas emissions from cheeseburgers than from all the SUVs in…
Ahem My efforts to cycle more regularly to work were impeded by rain, which fell…
Ahem The children have all been achieving great things this month, and Ella in particular…
Ahem Jessie updates us regularly with her news as she freewheels around New Zealand. She…
Ahem The month began in deepest white winter and finished in thrusting gusty springtime. Due…
Ahem Another month of repeated and heavy snowfalls caused delays to our plans in many…
Ahem Early in the month while walking with the dogs Alli slipped and fell on…
Ahem As the days suddenly became shorter to help spin the year to its conclusion,…
Ahem The great year-long French house purchase saga has been successfully concluded. We have taken…
Ahem Just before it started to get cold, I spent five nights in Marlow at…
Ahem We are creeping forward steadily on the house purchase. The results of my medical,…
Ahem So there I was, dressed only in swimming trunks and a balloon, floating on…
Ahem You may be amused or possibly worried to learn that I have participated in…
Ahem What a month to witness, savor and remember! What a gurgling gaggling bubbling reverberating…
Ahem Residents of the Appenzell Innerrboden canton of Switzerland voted overwhelmingly in their last open-air…
Ahem The Ferrette Morris Dancers danced at the village market in Oberwil, performing in the…
Ahem I wouldn’t call it Thelma and Louise exactly, but it was kinda cool as…
Ahem, We have spent much of the month closing in on a house just across…
Ahem Continuing snow, freezing winds, sludge and ice remind us that the Swiss are far…
Ahem Just as soon as December began, I had a funny feeling that it was…
Ahem There was celebration on a huge scale at the announcement of the new American…
Ahem For two weeks of this month Jessie spent some very high quality time in…
Ahem So there we were, chatting to a neighbour who had just dropped by, when…
Ahem At La Hune this year it was a hotter, sunnier and bluer-sky holiday than…
Ahem I have got to admit that I am still reeling from the experience of…
Ahem Although I grew up in London and lived there for the best part of…
Ahem, All through the month there has been irritatingly uncertain weather coupled with scattered public…
Ahem Rain has been falling rather too often this month, great gallons of it bucketing…
Ahem The bureaucratic contortions of sending a dog from Switzerland to New Zealand indicate one…
Ahem The Fasnacht, German Europe’s Mardi Gras, a controlled sequence of mayhem throughout Basel, has…
Ahem After such a long Christmas holiday break, going back to work in early January…
Ahem, We had Alli’s parents, Laurie and Kay, to stay with us for a few days.…
Ahem This is the month that we all thought that winter would drift in, as there are…
Ahem With all this mist and mellow fruitfulness around, thoughts are turning to winter and…
Ahem Our annual holiday in La Hune, Mansonville was as eventful as ever, full of…
Ahem, Alli and Ella have done much of the family´s travelling recently (as well as…
Ahem The highlight of the month has definitely been the Farewell Party for the Departing…
Ahem The merry month started with hot weather but finished with abrupt downpours and a clammy-cold Whitsun…
Ahem Sunny April has confirmed our suspicions that in Basel winter was not just late. It hardly…
Ahem It has been a big month for travelling, featuring a major Stanbrook family holiday…
Ahem I’m sure you all know the feeling. For several weeks I had been wondering…
Ahem We welcomed the New Year with our customary annual family gathering on our balcony…
Ahem This has been a crowded, jostling rambunctious month, teeming with alarum, pele-mele, noises off…
Ahem I have noticed that the year is hurtling through its course at an ever…
Ahem We had some welcome visitors at the beginning of the month, most particularly Miss…
Ahem The incessant rain, east winds and recurrent rolling thunder determined that August was wraithed…
Ahem While the girls have enjoyed some time in England we have all spent much…
Ahem We have all been spending more time in the garden as the salad days…
Ahem Alli and I have been going out together! Yes! We have had dinner together…
Ahem, A proud father reports: Gwen has been winning medals in the swimming pool. Two…
Ahem We (Jessie, Ella, their friends and I) have been to see the Magic Numbers…
Ahem In the time of snow, always turn left not right at the motorway that…
Ahem A year full of promise started for us in the company of our friends…
Ahem December started while I was on a business visit to America, and I had…
Ahem We have had our friend Ramon to stay for a last few days before…
Ahem This month we have had many difficulties with our computers, the internet and wireless…
Ahem We have decided to try to sell our house in Sussex. I suppose the…
Ahem We were no sooner back from holiday than Jessie announced that she was going…
Ahem The first few days of the month of July found me alone in the…
Ahem Summer has arrived and so have all those things related to summer that we…
Ahem It has been another rainy month all told and we have all struggled to…
Ahem April has been described as the cruellest month and it is true that April…
Ahem March is an expensive month in the Stanbrook household, as I find myself presented…
Ahem The beginning of the month found us all in very bad shape, and even…
Ahem We’ve been ice-skating quite a lot, and mostly since just before Christmas. The whole…
Ahem. I bring news of my latest bicycle accident. It was about three weeks ago.…
Ahem I had another crash on the bike, well, a minor but abrupt fall as…
Ahem I have finished Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, the first book in a trilogy for…
Ahem We are only now coming to the end of the drawn-out hassle of moving…
Dear Jessie Well now let me see……….. It’s quite confusing for me at the moment…