NOTES FROM THE HERMITAGE

As a follow-up to my last post, here area couple of 30-second videos of the sea, for any who haven’t been to the coast for a while, or...

I went to the seaside this week, for a day. It was like a mini holiday. I went with my support bubble - sister, brother-in-law and...

It's too late to be Springwatch, and I have neither the skills nor the kit of a BBC wildlife camera-person. But I have recently been...

11 July each year is Srebrenica Memorial Day, when the genocide of over 8000 Bosnian Muslims who had taken shelter in the supposed UN...

My post a few days ago about the squirrels was meant as a stand-alone piece. But, well, this brain of mine kept on ruminating on the...

Well, not quite, because the muntjac eat the roses. And Jemma the cat is seven years old. So here at the Hermitage, raindrops on leaves...

I have a pole with hanging bird-feeders outside my kitchen window. My mother and sister are far more knowledgeable about birds than I...

Softly prickly through my shirt and under my hands, Grasses green and brown bear my weight; Moving gently as I move, Forgiving, growing,...

Sorry for the lack of new blog posts over the last ten days. I was working on a piece that just didn’t come together - mainly because I...

To mark Refugee Week (15-21 June) the Jesuit Refugee Service, together with St Beuno’s Spirituality Centre, is running a photography...

The description of my blog mentions that a horse and cat might appear at times. I decided it was high time you met my equine therapist,...

I know the picture is of a lake, not a cave...but read on and the link will become clear! Of course, the Hermitage isn’t a cave either:...

A few posts ago, I mentioned the small, struggling rhododendron bush down towards the end of my garden. At that stage, it had just one...

We think we know the wind. We name it: breeze, scirocco, hurricane. We forecast it, in miles per hour, direction stated. We measure it...

“Welcome to the contents of my head”, says Tony, played by Ricky Gervais, in the dark comedy series After Life, on Netflix. The contents...

“Bloom where you are planted” - so says a magnet on my fridge. I should say that I don’t generally base my life on the wisdom of fridge...

You’ll have noticed that the consequence of me liking words is that I tend to use quite a lot of them - ie I don’t naturally write short...

I have always loved words and writing. Well, not quite always. Apparently I was a slow starter when it came to reading: my mum realised...

So, let me show you around a little bit of the Hermitage. We’ll start outside. Many CofE vicarages still come with unfeasibly large...