Confessions of an Author

A Quick Trip to Cambridge Cambridge is a great city for a short visit. We drove there, but all the narrow one-way streets, and students cycling, not to mention the suicidal ducks, meant that train would’ve been a better way to travel. Especially as, once you finally make it to the centre of town, there’s nowhere to park unless you take out a mortgage. We met Son and Daughter in Son’s extremely tidy flat (he left all his muddles at my house – feel I failed at a parenting point somewhere). Then we went to Bedouin on Mill Road for lunch. I’ve never eaten North African cuisine before, but it’s different, tasty, and best eaten slowly with some good conversation. The decor was lovely, the walls lined with fabric, so you did feel as if you had stepped into a Bedouin tent.   The only fault were the washrooms. The sign was somewhat confusing, so to be fair, I might have been in the Gent’s. It was very narrow, so a large person would find it impossible to manoeuvre past ...

A Letter to my Children : Visiting the ancestors in Hankerton. 2 Dear Children, Today I went to Hankerton, in Wiltshire. It’s a hamlet, a scattering of houses and a tiny church set in the Wiltshire countryside. It’s where my granny was born and raised, and is full of family history. It is your history too, so I will tell you about it, because one day you might visit on your own. Granny was born in Pear Tree cottage. She lived there with her parents, Mark and Mary Woodward. Mary washed clothes for the surrounding houses, and there was a well in the back garden, and a wash house next to the cottage. Mark was a busy man. I think he built part of the roof for the church, so maybe he was a builder. Mainly he was busy, because, it was later discovered, he actually had two families – my granny’s mother and another wife and children in the nearby market town of Malmesbury. Not sure which one was first, and therefore the legal wife. I have no idea what became of the other fami...