The tolls of pre-journey excitement, a 20-hour journey and a 9-hour time change have left me a touch incoherent. The flight to Toronto had an unhappy dog who seemed to be soiling his little travel house, judging from his whining and the aroma. Poor guy. On the flight to Munich a nice East European woman…
Leave house for husband to enjoy in solitary splendour in my absence. Catch bus to airport. Fly to Bilbao. Stay overnight. Go to Guggenheim Museum. Afternoon bus to Pamplona, overnight at Albergue Curazon Puro. Get ride to St. Jean Pied de Port. Stay at Albergue Beilari where I’ll meet other pilgrims at the communal dinner. Start…
Don’t read this unless you LOVE camino packing minutia. You’ve been warned! The time is drawing close and I’ve got everything ready. Several times over. My husband was away so I was free to indulge myself in camino preparations, with no one laughing as I wore my backpack around the house over my pyjamas. I…
The kitchen has been finished, two sets of visitors have come and gone, we’ve held a celebratory end-of-summer party, the fall weather has that crisp feel in the mornings, and I am counting the days. First, the kitchen. After only 14 months of food preparation in the laundry room, we have moved the centre of…
Now that August is almost over, I am reminded that August 2004 was eventful for me, as that month I started chemotherapy for breast cancer. It has now been 10 years since I bought this wig. If I ever need it again, I’ll need to streak it with white and grey paint. I must also…
Jane Christmas is a Canadian writer whose subjects are right up my alley. I recommend them all, if the titles/subtitles appeal to you. I have seen some pretty critical reviews of her books, and can see their points, but a writer can’t be all things to all people. Personally, I look forward to her next book. Here…
I picked this up at the library because it was on a featured shelf, and is a recently published novel by a renown author. Of course I knew of Joyce Carol Oates – she has written 40 novels – but I had only a vague memory of thinking highly of something she’d written. To start…
I’m reading Lone Voyager by Maureen Jenkins. She was an Englishwoman who decided that she had had enough and was going to make changes in her life. Having raised her sons to adulthood and tolerated her husband with difficulty for years, at the age of 50 she took a fancy to sailing, So she left…
Seeing Clarely 