Martha's Marvellous Munchies

One of the things that characterised 2019 for me was the feeling that I was suddenly hearing from a lot of viewpoints that I'd never heard before.   I realised that most of the people I know are a lot like me, and that other people have a very different way of seeing the world. Put like that, it seems dumb not to have realised that before.  But most of these books have been published in the last 4 years ( Americanah is oldest, from 2013), so maybe, too, these are voices that just wouldn't have been heard, and experiences that wouldn't have been talked about, a decade or more ago. I feel like these books have made me think more about prejudice, identity, and my assumptions about them.  But more than that, they've taken me to new places and helped me to see the world through different eyes.  And that's what books, at their best, are there for. Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch Afua Hirsch was born in the same year as I was, and gre...

January is whizzing by, and Christmas was almost a month ago!  It's far too late to be writing a Christmas post really, but the blog has got cobwebbed and dusty from neglect again, and it's an easy place to start.  So let's go. Carol singing Toby and Theo had an outdoor carol concert at school, in the absolute falling-down rain.  The parents peered out from under a multi-coloured array of umbrellas, the kids sang their hearts out from underneath dripping gazebos, a live donkey and horse made their appearance during Little Donkey , and the teachers did a flash-mob style rendition of Snow is Falling at the end, to much applause.  It was great. Graham joined the church Christmas choir and spent two months booming, "Rise up, shepherd, and follow!" at odd intervals.  We finally got to hear the complete carol on the Sunday before Christmas, which was packed with a nativity service in the morning and two carol services in the afternoon. Lights and other sh...