Blog

Witchcraft in Africa – article written my my father, doctor in Africa

Witchcraft, Sorcery And Mental Health By W.Norman-Taylor, M.D (Lond.), D.P.H., D.I.H., Public Health Advisor, South Pacific Commission “For if any adversity, grief, sickness, loss of children, corn, cattle, or liberty happen unto them; by and by they exclaim upon witches. As if there were no God in Israel that ordereth all things according to his […]

Posted 12 years ago

Wedding lists: the forgotton aim and the cheek of it!

We have been invited to a wedding. The couple in question have e-mailed us a short message saying they already have everything they need for the house (having been living together for some time) but that they’d love a couple of plants for the balcony and have added that what they’d really like is one […]

Posted 12 years ago

Meniere’s Syndrome and Meniere’s Disease

Meniere’s is an inner-ear illness named by a Frenchman, Prosper Meniere in 1861. Its main symptoms are dizziness, tinnitus, headache and deafness. The difference between the disease and the syndrome is that the syndrome can be related to a particular factor, e.g stress, that causes the discomfort and can often, therefore, be cured. The disease […]

Posted 12 years ago

Food in France is wonderful (or not).

I wasn’t going to say anything about it, truly I wasn’t. Because Solange and Philippe are friends, and they’re really nice people too. And I didn’t want to say anything even remotely negative. But I have been driven to it. This morning, Michelle, the caretaker, asked conversationally where we went out to eat last night. […]

Posted 12 years ago

Trip reports, holiday reviews – and don’t be nasty.

The aim of trip reports and holiday reviews has got lost somewhere in the general public’s love for making their own voice heard over the internet, frequently regardless of the consequences. The whole point of the system of reporting and reviewing was so that we could let each other know when a place was remarkably […]

Posted 12 years ago

Squirrels, potatoes and tulips. And a grave.

I spotted an item on PINTEREST this morning about how to get rid of un-wanted bugs and pests when you haven’t got the right stuff to hand. Somebody suggested pepper for ants, and pepper again for stopping a cat weeing in the same place – and so on. It made me remember how squirrels kept […]

Posted 12 years ago

Feral dogs in third world countries

“Travels with a Biro” There has been quite a lot of talk in Belize recently about destroying feral dogs. Some people throw up their hands in horror – it’s cruel ! But it is not. These feral dogs wander around in packs in most third-world countries, and even countries like Belize which is just dragging […]

Posted 12 years ago

Snails to eat in south-west France. French cuisine.

When the weather is damp (and this year we have had a lot of damp) my cleaning lady, Josie, comes round to pick up snails. She lives in a flat, you see, and the grounds around the blocks of flats are already covered by other tenants picking up snails whereas she, being the cleaning lady […]

Posted 12 years ago

Le loo de la Longue Droppe

It is odd that the French, so advanced in most ways, still have these archaic loos. Turkey, OK. Greece, OK. But France ? Actually, France was very late in sorting out its loo problems and when we first came here in 1989 many houses had no indoor loo, and many had no loo at all. […]

Posted 12 years ago

God bless silly people. No.3..Good humour

God bless silly people no.3 France, a couple of summers ago. My husband went outside after supper to put the car away in the garage. He noticed that the caretaker, who lives in the cottage by the road and who is in charge of watering the grounds in the evenings, was looking a bit harassed. […]

Posted 12 years ago

Books now available on Amazon:

A Call From France
French Sand
Kefani: An African Childhood
The Man With Green Fingers
Saying Nothing