Phyl's Blog

Saturday would have been my granny's 100th birthday. Of course, most people don't get to 100, so it's not surprisin...

So there I was the other day in COOP in Bibbiena (Italy), with Amaia, shopping. Suddenly she stops and shouts me over... Amaia: Italian...

Charlotte's always had a bit of an obsession with watermelon - from the annual family watermelon-eating photo, to watermelon, feta and...

I was parked beside this little car in a car park the other day. I used my phone to take  a photo of it with mine as they looked like ...

Seeing the news this morning made me think of my dad - I was going to write down why, but I could never explain it as well as he did in his...

He's gone, he's moved on! I would like to take this opportunity to praise my kids' primary school. I have no idea how the...

I was all fired up to blog about the election last night and then my Internet went down - joy of joys. This morning I simply feel dread......

This was taken the last time we spent a whole day in Pisa - we've flown through it since, but the kids haven't been to the tower sin...

Is it normal for an 11 year old to stand admiring himself in the mirror (when he hasn't noticed his sister is behind the door 🤣 ) an...

Fascinating question of the evening from number 5: Amaia: Is this a leap year? Me: No, last year was. Amaia: But we leapt over the 29th...

Léon has always had mild allergies. He doesn't even need to touch himself to end up looking like this, he simply needs to swim a coupl...

We are used to being able to track (some parents, literally, though not me) our kids. When Marcel is in Edinburgh I can see on Instagram or ...

We took the kids swimming at the weekend. Léon and Anna were competing on lengths of the pool. Léon managed twelve without stopping, so...

It's pyjama day at the primary today - I think they are trying to raise funds for some playground equipment, or something like that......

Charlotte has slowly spent the last eighteen months trying to accumulate the money to go off on a World Challenge expedition. In 2014   Marc...

Marcel dropped by for a few hours last week. Well, more truthfully, Marcel and his flatmates turned up here at 1am one ...

Thomas cut the grass for the first time last weekend. I cut the edges. As I stand in the kitchen looking out over my garden, everything l...

I am not very musical. I mean, I enjoy singing along to the kitchen ipod while I am doing the dishes as much as the next man, but my abil...

I had a vague memory from my childhood about a chat I had either with my mum or my dad about nicknames. They told me they had ruled out the ...

Various members of my family have down with a new ailment over the past two or three weeks - speckyitis. Sigh. Given I've bee...