Month: December 2013

Good on Crackers

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ 3 Comments

The cow is of the bovine ilk;

One end is moo, the other, milk. ~ Ogden Nash

Since moving to our little village in Wiltshire my husband and I, and our little dog, have enjoyed many beautiful walks through the surrounding countryside.  Our house sits on the very last street before the village gives way to farmland, and the briefest of strolls lands us in fertile green pastures. The joys of the legally protected right to walk on footpaths and other routes, even those that cross private land, is one which I shall cover in a future blog. For now I shall just note that these footpaths give us access to land and scenery that would otherwise be merely glimpsed in a blur from our car windows as we speed past on our way to somewhere else, and they allow us to get up close and personal with the animal which has contributed greatly to my personal happiness over the years – the cow. Continue reading →

Weather

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ Leave a comment

It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was how old – three, was it, or four? – never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.

“If only,” he thought, as he looked out of the window, “I had been in Pooh’s house, or Christopher Robin’s house, or Rabbit’s house when it began to rain, then I should have had Company all this time, instead of being here all alone, with nothing to do except wonder when it will stop.” And he imagined himself with Pooh, saying, “Did you ever see such rain, Pooh?” and Pooh saying, “Isn’t it awful, Piglet?” and Piglet saying, “I wonder how it is over Christopher Robin’s way” and Pooh saying, “I should think poor old Rabbit is about flooded out by this time.” It would have been jolly to talk like this, and really, it wasn’t much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn’t share them with somebody.

This excerpt from Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded by Water by A.A. Milne is proof that in Britain even the fictional characters spend a great deal of time thinking about, and talking about, the weather. And why shouldn’t they? For such a relatively small country the U.K. has an abundance of weather. Continue reading →

Divided by a Common Language

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ 2 Comments

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“England and America are two countries divided by a common language.” That quote, often attributed to George Bernard Shaw, but sometimes also to Oscar Wilde, is one of my husband’s favourites. Most of us are aware of the well-known differences – lorry instead of truck, torch instead of flashlight, courgette instead of zucchini. It is when a familiar word or phrase has a different meaning that signals can become crossed. Continue reading →