Author Archives: jemma74

This piece is the original, an edited version is appearing in my parish mag in March. I attended Ben’s inspiring and poignant service today and wanted to give others who knew and loved him the chance to read this in … Continue reading →

So, here I am. Not, exactly on the side of the Severn anymore (though, in recent weeks the Severn’s been about eight miles wide so we’ve got close) but still wanting to put “stuff” “out there”. Here’s a piece I … Continue reading →

Percy Patrick Arthur Donnelly arrived at 9.13pm on Thursday 22nd November. Lifted into the world after his poor mother had tried for thirty four hours to push him into it. And the world is simply not the same. Won’t ever … Continue reading →

About ten years ago my lovely friends Janey and Neill suggested I participate in a blind date. They’d be the other couple, it was with a lovely chap they’d met, a solicitor, a lover of books, paintings and other grown-up … Continue reading →

Today will be the tiniest bit lighter – and therefore feel the tiniest bit longer – than yesterday. Through this darkest of months people of many faiths and of no faith at all have been bringing light into their homes. … Continue reading →

I like china. A lot. Over the years I’ve amassed quite a collection. Not much of it is very rare or very valuable but it’s very pretty and, much to the horror of several other collectors of my acquaintance, I … Continue reading →

One of the many things over which Himself and I disagree is music. There are moments of convergence, XTC for example, and we were in complete agreement about walking out of church to the strains of Booker T and the … Continue reading →

Poems (or “pomes”, as my lovely English teaching friend Marilyn Mary Mack call them) have been thin on the ground this year. This suggests that I just find them lying around like a gorgeously speckled pebble or a perfectly patinaed … Continue reading →

….The fifth of November 2009. The first time I heard my husband’s voice. ‘Twas a dark and stormy night and I’d just popped into Sainsbury’s to grab a sandwich prior to taking students out to the theatre. It was quite … Continue reading →