On 8 September 1761 King George III married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he had first met less than six hours before the wedding, in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. Remarkably, the two feel deeply in love and both remained faithful throughout their 57 years of marriage. George had been come king on… Read more The Marriage of King George III and Queen Charlotte
Yesterday we loaded the three girls into the car and headed out to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, on the southern end of St Brides Bay, walking all the way out on the Marloes Peninsula to its tip, Wooltack Point, where you can see Skomer Island. Dear Lord, is the coast of Pembrokeshire picturesque. We… Read more Seal Pups and Meerkat Babies!
When you research royalty in history, it is mostly about how desperately they needed to be fertile. The last thing a royal wanted was a way of preventing conception. The ideal was as many kids as fast as possible, with all-star standouts such as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (10 births/9 surviving), Queen Eleanor of Castile… Read more No More Crocodile Dung!
Lice. AKA cooties. My daughters brought home the wee vermin this week in their hair, necessating a thorough saturation of their hair with a mixture of olive oil and a generous portion of tea tree oil. The olive oil smothers cooties and makes it easier to fine-comb them out, and the tea tree oil kills… Read more A Lousy Time Was Had By All
Happy May Day Birthday to my darling middle daughter, Buttercup! I had heard all my life that “May babies were good babies” (they weren’t fussy and were healthy) and that babies born on Beltane were a particular blessing for their parents … and particularly blessed individuals. This belief may have come to America with the… Read more Beltane Babies Are Best!
My lovely, sweet –natured, bleeding-heart daughter Blossom recently announced to a table of her birthday guests that she was “genocidal”. While her friends stared at her, aghast, I calmly asked, “What do you think that word means, Blossom?” She smiled and chirped, “That you are a fan of creepy movies and stories about murder and… Read more That word doesn’t mean what you think it means …
My beloved eldest daughter came into the world on 29 March 2005 like a firework, and she has been filling me with same overwhelming awe and joy that I felt when I first saw her ever since. Blossom has been in my life for 12 glorious years now, and I cannot fathom how my world… Read more Happy Birthday Beautiful Blossom
I am in a bit of a quandary. Wither do I dither, you may ask? You see, it is International Women’s Day, many women are on strike for A Day Without Women, and there are too many things I want to blog about on this topic. On the one hand, I could blog about Jane… Read more International Women’s Day and Squirrels
My youngest daughter, Bubbles, is seven years old today. I have become a cliché; that mom who cannot believe how fast the time has flown past and who cannot fathom how here “baby” has become a big girl so quickly. It feels as though it were yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital.… Read more Happy 7th Birthday Bubbles!
Yesterday my husband and I took our children to Margam Country Park, which is near Port Talbot in south Wales. It is more than 800 acres of pretty landscape and and home of some remarkable historic buildings. To wit: the ruins of Margam Abbey, the Margam Orangery from the Regency period, and Margam Castle. Thus,… Read more Ruins and Regency