Hello lovely students, Well, this is a bit awkward. Last weekend, Donald Trump appeared to announce that our Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer was going to resign… before Starmer had officially announced it himself. 🤦♀️ Which brings us to a brilliant English idiom: to jump the gun This means: to do something too early, before the right moment. For example: “I was going to tell everyone about my new job, but my mum jumped the gun and posted it on Facebook.” Or: “Don’t jump the gun — we haven’t...
16 days ago • 2 min read
(Useful vocabulary has been highlighted in bold and is defined at the very end.) Good Morning, Lately, I’ve become a little obsessed with my garden. I can spend hours out there, tinkering around: deadheading, weeding, trying to propagate, and generally pottering about, tending to my plants. Now, I don’t have a lot of space. So when I decided I wanted a little kitchen garden, I had to give up some of my existing planting area to build two raised beds. And because these two small beds are all I...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader Do you have a memory like a sieve? I do. Always have. If you've never heard this phrase before, it means you forget things very easily. So it will probably come as no surprise to hear that my least favourite subject at school was history. It bored me to tears. Dates. Names. Places. Endless sequences of events. I remember one term in particular when we were studying the Tudors. King Henry VIII and his six wives… scandalous yes, but still painfully hard to memorise. We had to learn...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hello from London, If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know I’m a huge foodie. I love my food, particularly comfort food. One of my favourite dishes is pie and mash with gravy. A pie in the UK is usually a pastry case filled with something savoury — often steak, chicken, or vegetables. We do have sweet pies, like apple pie, but normally we state the filling when it’s sweet. If a Brit simply says “pie”, we usually imagine the savoury kind. And mash simply means mashed potatoes. Pie and...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Recently, I found myself in a brightly lit school hall, sitting on one of those very low plastic chairs at my sons’ parents’ evening. The teachers were kind. The feedback was mostly positive. But as I smiled and nodded, I became acutely aware of myself. I was trying very hard to come across as the “perfect” parent. And in doing so I may have done the opposite. I left the room wondering what the teachers really thought of me. Maybe they saw me as a bit too strict, or a bit too pushy. Maybe I...
9 months ago • 3 min read
The other day, a letter landed on my doormat. From the police. Addressed to me. 😳 Uh-oh. Apparently, I’d broken the law. I was caught doing 24mph in a 20mph zone. Just 4 miles over. Not exactly Fast & Furious, but still - technically - speeding. Now, to be fair, this new blanket rule of 20mph in all residential areas isn’t always easy to stick to. Especially when you’re going down a steep hill and your car just wants to roll away with you... But let me be clear: I’m not a speed demon. I’m not...
9 months ago • 3 min read