Martyn Offord20 hours ago3 minMay 30th A Fishy TailYesterday I somewhat saucily suggested frisbee as a sound socially spaced game, perfect for gatherings not exceeding six, excluding members of your own famil...
Martyn Offord2 days ago4 minMay 29th Freedom to Throw a FrisbeeWirksworth is the nearest I’ve been to a town since we were in Cardiff over two months ago. The implications of Coronavirus had just become apparent. The str...
Martyn Offord3 days ago3 minMay 28th Ten to ThreeI think ‘torpor’ is a lovely word. I suppose any word is lovely if it says it just as it is, and after successive days of sultry sunshine, torpid is how I fe...
Martyn Offord4 days ago3 minMay 27th Ible as in BibleIn the 1980s and 90s, when we were regular weekend visitors to our Derbyshire caravan from Nottingham our first stop was always the Barley Mow in Bonsall. A ...
Martyn Offord5 days ago4 minMay 26th Beginnings, Endings and In-BetweensYesterday a tiny baby robin hopped onto our patio. From the top of the step ladder where I was working, for a moment I thought it was a mouse, it was so smal...
Martyn Offord6 days ago3 minMay 25th Cwtch Me If You CanAfter the usual over the wall agreement that the weather is splendid and the gardens are looking good, there is that sad hesitation and then the confession t...
Martyn Offord7 days ago3 minMay 24th Meandering Musings upon a Five Pound NoteThe five pound note was in an envelope in the bottom of the bag of music I use for choir. It was money I had collected for the after concert chips and sandwi...
Martyn OffordMay 233 minMay 23rd An Atonement for Guilt.Our current plight has resulted in all sorts of dilemmas where we feel morally compromised. I have already mentioned our discomfort at the idea of other peop...
Martyn OffordMay 225 minMay 22nd Covid Conversations“. .....he may have had to a preternatural degree that quality of mind, not unknown among modern scholars, that causes a man to believe that whatever he thin...
Martyn OffordMay 213 minMay 21st Too Much of a Stinge to BingeSeveral Christmases ago, or it may have been birthdays. Deirdre asked me what I wanted as a present. I replied something with sex and violence, so she bought...
Martyn OffordMay 204 minMay 20th Cuckoo LandThis morning early, almost furtively, we sneaked out to embark on our longest journey since March – all the way through Cromford, up the Via Gellia, left at ...
Martyn OffordMay 194 minMay 19th 50 up and a City Set Upon a HillFiftieth post on my blog! As there don’t seem to be any plans for acknowledging the fact, no TV specials, no street parties, I’m going to reflect on this lan...
Martyn OffordMay 183 minMay 18th Hurricanes and SpoutsThis morning I watched a pair of blackbirds trying to feed from a hanging coconut on the front patio. The coconut has been there for months and all the ungra...
Martyn OffordMay 174 minMay 17th Click and RecollectShopping has always been hellish, unless it’s a shop that sells CDs, books or pies. I remember enduring the unalleviated damnation of wandering along the fo...
Martyn OffordMay 163 minMay 16th When Will I be Glam?This must be about the time of year the BBC invites next year’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing ‘celebrities. Based on the fact that for the last few years unknowns w...
Martyn OffordMay 154 minMay 15th The Mothers GrimI realise that yesterday’s blog was over twice the length of an average piece of ‘A’ Level English coursework, the sort I would once have been marking round...
Martyn OffordMay 146 minMay 14th Parsley and SageI have been in trouble with my editor for getting too academic and too philosophical about major existential dilemmas. She actually called me ‘a teacher’ whi...
Martyn OffordMay 133 minMay 13th My Craft or Sullen ArtI seem to be engaged in a perpetual interior monologue these days. Maybe it’s the limited number of possible people with whom I can have a conversation or ma...
Martyn OffordMay 123 min.May 12th The Day the Bears Come OutOn Florence Nightingale’s 126th anniversary Deirdre was born and ever after May 12th has been consecrated as the birthday of two women who changed history. ....
Martyn OffordMay 114 minMay 11th Co-ordinating your ConjunctionsZoom home schooling for 8 year old Mollie today was learning to recognise subordinate and co-ordinating conjunctions. This requires an 8 year old to understa...