Most Recent Posts
Writing a blog can become a bit like a diary, an intensely private affair, so it comes as an occasional wake-up to realise it's actually really quite widely read. Like when I walked into the offices at Chapel Down Wines in Tenterden this...
I am quite literally boiling mad - it's a beautiful summer evening and, by rights, I should be doing yoga on the roof of my local sports centre. Admittedly, it sounds a little odd, but it's a flat roof, perfectly safe and, as a close-knit group, we've...
What a fantastic weekend for weather! I'm sure everyone made the most of it, and it does make you realise what a great part of the world we live in. Having been in West Sussex all day Friday for various meetings, including our August review, with the...
Had the most bizarre dream last night - and boy, can I do weird dreams - which involved our leader, Suzanne, finding out that I had a horse chestnut tree at the end of my garden and getting terribly excited about the possibilities this opened up for inter-magazine...
It's been a bit of a whirlwind week since going to press last Tuesday, which already seems ages ago, especially as we're hurtling through our September edition already. Well, that's my excuse for tardiness on the blogging front, anyway. Monkey and...
This is a sad, sad day in the Kent Life office - Monkey has Come To A Decision, and it's not been an easy one. The following announcement is in his own words, for I simply cannot do justice to the pain he is experiencing. Here it is then, in full and...
Contrary to all expectations, the sun shone on the opening day of the Kent County Show and the 250-acre site at Detling was bustling even at 8.30am, when Monkey and I rocked up. Economic downturn? Not a great deal of sign of that at arguably the most...
Well, Cap'n Suzanne is definitely back from her travels - two weeks on a cruise ship around Russia and Scandinavia - looking sickeningly well and raring to go. As I can vouch for - my mobile rang at 6.40am today and there she was, bright and breezy, on...
Well, in true British spirit, my Mum's 'Big Bash' at the weekend was a triumph of having-fun-whatever- the-weather. Originally planned as a garden party - we even put up a gazebo in a howling gale the day before - by the time high noon on Saturday came...
Ever had one of those days when you just know it's going to go from bad to worse? Pretty weary this morning after a long but very productive day at Worthing positively hurtling through page design with Kerry, followed by a double class of pilates and...
I had the very great pleasure of re-visiting Chiddingstone Castle on Friday evening, not this time with a view to writing an article about it, but as the guest of the Kent Community Foundation for their annual fundraising dinner. Chief executive Iain...
The thing about holidays is that you have to come back. Shake the sand out of your suitcase, and be aware that you'll be finding it in the carpet for weeks. Sort out the garden - which, in just a week, has become a ravaging beast, the grass is a foot...
So we have come to our final few hours in Barcelona, and I’m writing this in the apartment that has become home for the past week, feeling highly grateful to its owners for allowing daughter and I to stay in it until 5.30pm, when ‘normal’chucking out...
Greetings from Barcelona, where daughter and I are now thoroughly at home in our fourth-floor apartment in the city´s L´Éixample district. W´re right by Gaudi´s La Sagrada Familia (Church of the Holy Family), which has become the symbol of Barcelona –...
I've spent a rather unusual weekend, more or less hanging around the churchyard of my childhood village in Somerset (no, I wasn't trying to nick the lead - that's all been taken. More than once). I was there to support the local...
Feeling a little weary this morning - a late one, but a great one, at Penshurst Place last night, the guest of the Viscount and Lady De L'Isle at a dinner to celebrate the centenary of the Territorial Army. The great and good of the county were gathered,...
I am - quite literally - in the hot seat today. Down at Worthing head office for press day, by 10am I was on my third 'hot desk' in two hours, and now seem to have ended up in my boss's chair, which is largely terrifying. God help me if I disturb anything...
I love this time of year - patio doors wide open, plenty of light still at gone 8.30pm, my garden a sea of tranquil green interspersed with a massive hedge of creamy roses. And the ubiquitous smells of barbecues from neighbouring gardens wafting on the...
Today is Monkey's 'two-and-a-half-years-at-Kent-Life anniversary', marked in traditional style with the ceremonial handing over of a monkey, to join the now quite ridiculous number festooning the office and hanging from the windows. They include...
Got a bit frantic on the Kent Life front on Friday, so didn't get a chance to regale you with my lunchtime 'mingling with the stars' at the celebration of the British Wireless for the Blind's 80 years of service to the blind community - and their move...
Our Pudding Lane premises rang with excited chatter and the clatter of footsteps up and down our many, many flights of stairs today - yes, it was the invasion of the south east managment team, intent on saving the world from an attic in the heart of Maidstone....
When you get an email from your boss about how much she's enjoyed reading the latest edition of Kent Life, sent at 10.15pm on a Bank Holiday Monday, you realise several things. One, that it's probably a little crazy to be looking at your work emails at...
It's been a busy old day - enjoyed a media lunch at Buss Murton solicitors in Tunbridge Wells, a great opportunity to meet the senior management team and to discuss the firm's expansion in Kent, in what must rank as one of my favourite office...
It's been a bit of a day for domestic disasters. Woke up to find my big green recycling bin had somehow lost its lid between me putting it at the top of my drive the day before, it being emptied and lovely neighbour Bill wheeling it back down again. Had...
This is a very special timeof the month - the 'new' magazine is out, so we get to have the fun (and mingled terror) of going though the hot-from-the-press edition, page by analytical page. We are also well into the production schedule for our next...