Daily Prompt: Burning Down the House Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab? On television recently we have watched a few documentary programmes on "preppers". These are people who live in fear in my view. That is no way to live at all.... Continue Reading →
Everything she knows
I taught her everything she knows. That's what the mother said on the sixteenth birthday of the eldest daughter. Not everything, said the daughter. But nobody heard her until years later when she found her true voice. © Allison Wright, 2013.
The meaning of invincible
It is a feature of human nature that we more readily accept into our personal realm those with whom we share something in common than those with whom we do not. By reading a book, we accept whatever that book holds into our own space, the space we hold most dear. The fact that Muriel... Continue Reading →
Kindling and the same ol’
"It's the same old story— yeah" Simon & Garfunkel, "Keep the customer satisfied"- For the chronologically-challenged, here's the brushed up CD version. I do hope there are still those out there who recognised the quotation immediately. The same old story is a reference to the fact that despite the convergence of opportunity, technology, and even a... Continue Reading →
Favourite thing
Today's Daily Prompt invites bloggers to toot their own horn. We have been invited to write about our favourite thing about ourselves, given our normal excellence at self-deprecation. Oooh! Online group therapy! Forget it! I much prefer being self-deprecating, as much as it annoys one of my favourite cousins. It is a reflex action ingrained... Continue Reading →
Daily Prompt: Polite Company
When you have a big idea stewing, but not the energy to bring it to the boil, you can always count on WordPress to provide a safer option! Today's daily prompt is prompting thus: “It’s never a good idea to discuss religion or politics with people you don’t really know.” Agree or disagree?" Let's start... Continue Reading →
Saturday morning coffee
When I say I live in the rural Algarve, I sometimes think city folk misunderstand what that might mean. I am not surrounded by livestock (but could be, if I had a different job). It means that where I have Saturday morning coffee looks nothing like a coffee shop from the outside, in the shopping... Continue Reading →
A poem
There is something new in my Spare Room. Have a look here: https://wrightonthebutton.com/spare-room/loving-ancestry/
Every language pair
Given the recent punishing work schedule I imposed on myself, I may be forgiven for thinking that I was hallucinating, but this e-mail actually did arrive in my spam folder. I appreciate that it is very difficult to achieve perfection of expression in one's own language, let alone a second one. I am not knocking... Continue Reading →
Numerically fitting, more or less
51 is the number of years of marriage my parents celebrated today. I skyped the happy couple in Australia from Portugal. Full of the joys of spring, they are. 5,000 is the number that ticked over on the counter today, which tells me how many visits there have been to this blog since I migrated... Continue Reading →
That elusive pair of jeans 