Author Archives: juliachalkley

Someone said to me last week; ‘Last time I looked it was Boxing Day and now it’s February! Where did January go?’ It was an odd month. I had a vicious cold just before Christmas which I passed on to himself, and which he passed back to me for a January present. I’ve just aboutContinue reading “Play for Today”

Take ten points if you recognised the quote from Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Those are the names of the four cows under Adam’s lacklustre care, but honestly, it also describes how I’ve been feeling recently. We took down the decorations on January 5th and switched off the strings of lights decorating the garage,Continue reading “Feckless, Aimless, Pointless and Graceless”

We get around to December and all our preparations for Christmas look like a siege. We declare the last shopping day before Christmas, the last trip out, the last set of Christmas cards written and posted. After that, we close the doors against the world and don’t go back out into the traffic again. We’veContinue reading “Not Going Out”

After a frantic few weeks of organisation, our OU writers’ group met up at Cromer in the last weekend of November 2022. Six of us arrived at West Cottage; the other three turned up on our screens thanks to Zoom. For the first time since 2015, we had all nine of our group gathered together.Continue reading “Cromer”

Our latest trip out was to Ely Cathedral. It’s the third time we’ve been there, and every time that first sight of the cathedral is a Wow moment. All those miles of flat land and then that enormous pale building on the skyline. The first visit was for my graduation from the OU with aContinue reading “Called to the Table”

As the saying goes; ‘When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s easy to forget that you went in there to drain the swamp.’ I started this blog two years ago after a (more successful) writing friend told us about ways to advertise your writing. I write for fun, but the idea of startingContinue reading “Drain the Swamp”

Last year we planted eight melon vines and were rewarded with two melons. So I planted the last of our melon seeds with more hope than expectation this year. I ended up with fifteen surviving melon plants and no-one else offering to take them in, so I planted the lot in the polytunnel. Laws ofContinue reading “Harvest – the fruits”

As a young child, I sat through school assemblies where September meant singing the hymn ‘Harvest Home’. Girl Guides’ church parades involved bringing something to add to the pile of harvest ‘stuff’ at the altar – the lucky kids with a fruit tree in the back yard brought an apple, some of the parents tookContinue reading “Harvest – the seeds”