The village public address system has fallen silent. There used to be twice-weekly announcements over the PA telling of shop opening times,

I was looking forward to Tom’s book and CD launch. Then this virus farce-cum-Armageddon came along. In his wisdom, Tom had asked me to lend an editorial hand...

For two and a half years the upstairs section of our house was like a Lego set with several key pieces missing.

The mystery of the foam rubber litter under the car bonnet was solved by the man at the garage. He had seen this many times before. “Kuna”.

Our friends ridiculed the idea of an organic, pre-junkfood, non-processed healthy diet, but I wasn’t having it. We were soon ranting...

I’m listening to a Czech version of Stupid Cupid Stop Picking On Me. I am a reluctant listener, but the builders’ radio is very loud.

The man who was making our new garden door phoned. He would deliver it tomorrow, mid-morning. He duly turned up at 6.30.

At first glance, the following comments might not seem relevant to renovating a house in the Czech wilderness. But they are.

The wolves appeared last summer. It’s the first pack in Bélý for as long as anyone can remember.

I was recently asked to write a blog about Oxfordshire history. I’d just finished writing a concise history of the county.

As I opened the door to the kitchen corridor, the wren zipped through to the dining room at the far end, her wings purring past my ear.

I’m sitting on a bench at the top terrace of the garden, with Fido beside me, his nose as restless as a class of ten year olds seconds befor

It rained more than I could ever imagine it raining in a non-equatorial location.

With snow piling up in the attic, a frozen loo, holes in the wall wide enough to admit a decent sized bear, it was a proper winter.

Born with a plastic spoon rather than a silver one, I’d not had the opportunity before to see how easy it is to spend a huge amount of money

Magda finished what the rain had started, knocking down the soggy internal walls and removing what remained of the mud and straw ceiling.

The attic of our 1720 former pub yielded a few treasures, mostly buried under mounds of hay and wood, or tucked under the floorboards.

With no internet in our damp, crumbling ruin-cum-home, I had to look for an office. The end result was a large room in Jan and Theo’s school

When the roofers finally moved in, the moody, wet summer had turned into an even moodier, positively flooded autumn.

As you know, April 30th is the day when the winter goddess surrenders to the advancing year and allows the summer goddess to take over...