The Maroon Diaries

Most of the neighbours at my new home are the non-human variety, which is just lovely. A lot of them are cows. The land we live on sits behind the road from another block of land, with a right-of-access road running through it to get to our home. This land is owned by a cow farmer, so we have to pass through a cow paddock to get in and out. I just love it. Unusually, there seem to be a lot of different breeds of cattle all together in one paddock. I wonder if the farmer just really likes cows and wanted to collect lots of different kinds, like I do with vintage crockery and suchlike. I'm not sure when the official cattle breeding season is meant to be but these cows seem to be producing young regularly. Every now and then there will be a new tiny baby cow in the paddock, following its mother and finding its feet. There's always a mixture of the young ones that stick by their mothers, and the older, more sedate and mellow mothers, and some feisty half-grown adolescents that we...

Happy New Year, everybody! Cheers! I meant to spend the New Year's Eve putting this post online, but instead, I spent the evening socialising with Loved Ones over drinky-poos like a normal human being. I'm so pleased with myself. So here we are with my Year in Books for 2013. 1. Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn 2012 2. The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide by Francine Jay 2010 3. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin 1974 4. The Pickled Pantry by Andrea Chesman 2012 5. Wild Women edited by Sue Thomas 1994 6. Ignorance by Michele Roberts 2012 7. The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson 2012 8. European Mythology by Jacqueline Simpson 1987 9. The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody 2008 10. Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs 2011 11. The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson 2009, English translation 2012 12. World Made By Hand by James Howard Kunstler 2008 13. Precious ...