A room of one’s own
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Little tent in the big woods.
When I was about 8, my cousins decided that we would pitch a tent in the woods behind our holiday home, and camp out overnight. During the day leading up to that, it seemed like a fun, adventurous idea, but by the time evening came, I wasn’t so sure. I remember a growing knot in…
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Pointless, valuable words.
“This too shall pass”, “it’s just a phase”, “look for the good in it” etc etc etc. Particularly of late, I seem to have been on the receiving end of a lot of comments like these. At least one a day I would say. Mostly, they irritate me, and I use some misguided superiority of…
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“Not I” said the goose
Reading The Little Red Hen to Samuel two nights ago, I was reminded of a truly valuable life lesson. Ignoring the fact that I am furthering my education solely through children’s books now, it was surprisingly effective. All of the little red hen’s farm-yard companions repeatedly refuse her appeals for assistance with planting, threshing, grinding…
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Goldilocks, smiley biscuits and a little red bicycle
My granny died this week, and as I was trying to grab hold of my best memories of her, these were three of the many things that came to mind. Granny never did anything by halves, and before old age caught up with her, she moved through life like an unstoppable five-foot hurricane. She never…
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Perfecting or wrecking?
There’s a hilarious Father Ted episode where he tries to undo a small dent in a borrowed car, and ends up completely hammering it beyond all recognition. Tap tap tap, just a wee bit more here, a wee bit more there, and it turns into a write-off. I think I found it funny because I…
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The opposite of the emperor’s clothes…
Terrible title, I know, but I’m waiting to come across a better way of putting it. My reasons for it – the emperor thought he had everything, when he had nothing, sometimes I think the reverse about myself. Recently, I’ve had a growing realisation that maybe my frequent hankering after unfulfilled aspirations and possible plans…
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In my papa’s chair
children wondering why papa cannot Or will not play; His heart joins them While his body cannot respond Those are the lines of a poem that my grandfather wrote towards the end of his life. Out of a whole book of poetry, I have always remembered those particular words – mainly because they gave me…
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Ships that pass in the night
“We’re like ships that pass in the night!” I quipped to my neighbour as we lugged our children out of the car and into our prospective houses. But it got me thinking: how many encounters do I have every day that are like that, and how many of those are in any way significant? I…
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The taco’s getting cold.
Which means: stand up, turn the oven on again and put the taco back in, because I don’t have the energy to do it myself, but really don’t want to be accused of nagging. Under some self-scrutiny, it seems that, most of the time, there is an unspoken current of discourse running through my life. …
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Reach for the sky.
What does that mean in non-cowboy terms? In this age of dream-catching, maybe it’s better to say ‘reach for the stars’… In any case, what I mean is that I want to take a risk, put myself out there and see if I can make one of my dreams a reality. That dream is to…
Ruth Writes 