Two weeks ago, I announced a new feature which I am crediting to Robert’s sister Rachael. This is my very first monthly re-cap. What can I tell you about April? Well, I have used my umbrella more often than any other month in recent memory. The old adage of “April Showers” proved most true. Plenty of rainy days that resulted in very muddy wellingtons. I seem to have to hoover the hallway twice a day. I have been longing for warmer weather now that we have longer evenings. But we will have to wait so it seems. The grass is loving the rainfall. The mowing routine has begun!
The month began on a most sacred note. The annual memorial of Christ’s sacrifice – the greatest act of love for mankind. It was a poignant reminder to us of how much we value life, how much we love our family and friends, how much we hope for this earth and mankind’s future.
We hosted Robert’s sister and her family the following weekend. I went shopping with Rachael, the first time since before the Pandemic. It was lovely! Wills is rather henpecked by his three younger sisters. Our niece Charlotte has a big interest in baking and I supervised her while she baked a batch of blondies for everyone to snack on. She has a sweet tooth like none I have ever encountered.
The girls all seem to accept that we won’t be buying them chocolate eggs any more. Last year, it seemed a momentous change to announce. This year, they don’t seem bothered in the least. We had a wonderful time hosting relatives, laughing, eating, singing, talking – and there was nothing lacking by the absence of imagery and symbols that are far removed from Christ and his teachings. Sometimes I wonder what we were ever worried about! Laura joined our family dinner on Sunday, and it was a pleasure to see how well she gets on with the girls.
April has seen the return of the BBC Masterchef series. The truth is…unless I lose my marbles, there is no way I am going to enter a televised cooking contest – that alone reminds me I ought to respect all of the participants. I do admire their bravery, even those who go out in the first round!
Here is a compilation of all of the posts that were published on this site during April 2023 – we hope you enjoyed the food, drink, music, books and more!
As you know, this is the first time I have incorporated this new feature, and I imagine I may experiment a little with the editing of these monthly recap posts. The idea is for you to have a very short and sweet account of highlights or noteworthy events in our personal life (don’t worry I don’t intend to bore you with reams of unrelatable information) and then a compilation of the posts I published during the month with links that make them easily accessible.
Rachael (Robert’s sister) noticed that my WordPress account has had a lot of attention. I have posts scheduled to be published well into 2025. This is why she came up with the idea of extra features. I do not really want to increase the frequency of my WordPress posts. I like the current schedule as it is, although I love this idea of a monthly recap. But to diversify and expand on this little hobby, I have been experimenting with an Instagram account. It’s fairly straightforward because I have masses of content ready to use. I just have to add a brief comment and a few hashtags (which I am getting the hang of slowly) to each post.
If you are a WordPresser and also an Instagrammer – then please send a message so I can find your Instagram feed. Here are some of my recent Instagram posts:
LADY LEWIS 
A lovely start to this new series. I really enjoyed it. I’ve followed your Instagram account, but can’t really recommend my own, as I hardly ever post on it!
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I have never had an interest in social media, but we were chatting with one of our marketing team and she made an interesting comment to me. She pointed out that nowadays, you cannot just put all of your efforts into one field, it may be wasted if a very limited number of readers prefer that one channel. She said you need to be spread across social media platforms – and that even if you don’t want to make them your main focus, you can at least make them a doorway leading to the work you would like people to enjoy. Well, I don’t want to do Facebook, TikTok or Twitter (although Robert has tried Twitter) so I thought I would try out Instagram. So far, it seems ok. I keep on receiving weird messages from Sheen or Shine?…telling me I have won a gift card. There are also a number of men who have sent me rather friendly messages and followed my account – when I took a peek at their accounts – every single picture was of them – serious cases of poser-ism – which completely put me off them.
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If you’re taking it seriously that is good advice – you need to open your blog to as many readers as possible. I’m just a hobbyist at this, but even so I link my posts to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr and get the occasional extra view that way. Oddly, perhaps, I’ve hardly ever used Instagram so can’t comment on it: I hope it works well for you though. You wouldn’t see many shots of me on mine – I don’t like frightening people 😊
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You site is lovely!
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Great feature – Rachael had a great idea!
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