You don’t need a degree in culinary arts or a set of expensive, gold-leafed preserves to master the art of the dessert; in fact, the biggest lie people tell you is that a trifle has to look like a work of art to be good. I spent years watching people agonise over the perfect, symmetrical […]
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I remember sitting in a drafty hallway in a mid-Victorian semi near Salisbury back in ’94, clutching a lukewarm cup of tea and watching the clock tick past four o’clock. I was waiting on a solicitor who had promised the searches would be back by Tuesday; it was now Friday, and the silence from their […]
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I was standing in my hallway last Tuesday, staring at a particularly large, gilded piece that had been sitting in a crate for three months, wondering if I was actually going to attempt it or just leave it there until the next decade. Most people think that if you just buy a bigger screw, you’ve […]
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I was out by the old flint wall near the bottom of Church Lane yesterday—the one we finally patched up back in ’94—trying to get a bit of work done before the rain set in. I’d only been out for twenty minutes before my eyes started watering like a leaky tap and my nose felt […]
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I saw a post on the village Facebook group the other day suggesting that the best way to greet newcomers involves a “curated welcome hamper” filled with artisanal cheeses and expensive scented candles. Give me a break. If you’re looking for advice on how to welcome new neighbours that involves spending forty quid on a […]
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I was standing in Arthur Miller’s garden last Tuesday—a lovely 1930s semi over by the old mill—watching him stare blankly at a pile of timber for a new summerhouse. He was convinced he’d need to hire a consultant and spend months arguing with the planning office just to put up a bit of wood and […]
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I was out near the old flint boundary on Saturday, trying to get a stubborn section of dry stone wall to sit right, when the heat finally caught up with me. It wasn’t a sudden thing, but rather that slow, heavy realization that my head was thumping and my mouth felt like I’d been chewing […]
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Most people will tell you that the secret to a decent scone is some expensive, imported flour or a complicated chilling process that takes half a day, but they’re wrong. I spent years watching people struggle in the village hall kitchen, wasting good cheddar because they followed instructions that were more suited to a laboratory […]
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I was sitting in my study last Tuesday, trying to finish a piece on the new bypass, when that familiar, hollow trickling sound started drifting up from the downstairs cloakroom. It’s a sound I’ve heard in hundreds of cottages across this county, from the mid-Victorian terraces in Salisbury to the more modern builds near Pewsey. […]
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I was sitting in the village hall last Tuesday, listening to some well-meaning youngster suggest that the best way to support a struggling family was through a coordinated fundraising gala or a series of “wellness workshops.” Honestly, it made my blood boil. If you want to know how to help a carer, you don’t need […]
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