Friko's World

There is just about still time to wish you all a happy and peaceful new year. Had I waited until tomorrow, being February, it might have bee...

15th November to 15th January - a long break from blogging. Only five followers have decided that this blog isn’t worth following now, so t...

If you love Christmas and everything that goes with it, don’t read on. I am feeling grumpy. A list of my favourite hates might just make me...

We’ve been food and drink shopping as if the festive season would never end. Cupboards, larder and freezers are groaning under the impact. I...

Did you leave your boots out last night for Sankt Nikolaus to fill with presents from the sack he carried over his shoulders as he roamed ...

with skies of unrelieved grey; wet and grey and muddy underfoot. As if Christmas on its own weren’t bad enough. However, I survived, as I ...

Christmas 2013 I said “not everything went wrong”. This festive season was no different. The relief that it’s all over is great. If ‘fest...

Yes, there had indeed been a meeting, possibly the sort of thing that might be called an emergency council. We didn’t know about it at the t...

“You can’t just barge in here without an appointment”, he blustered. “This is my home and my family and I are about to eat our supper. If yo...

I caught a cold, a snot-rattling, throat-rasping, eye-watering, croaking-voiced cold. Fräulein Optenberg was certain the cold would be gon...

"I can’t stand a naked light bulb, amy more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action”, Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois ...

 over the Christmas period. On the contrary, a lot went right. True, a friend delivering a last minute card for me fell down some steps in...

No, not quite, go back to sleep for a bit longer. It’s Boxing Day (St. Stephen’s Day) - on this day tradesmen, servants and chi...

Christmas I had almost forgotten the singing in the streets, Snow piled up by the houses, drifting Underneath the door into the warm ro...

"Mrs. Dollor had us on the step when we was kids, telling us the time, she teached, she taught us the time, she learned us she did, ...

"I got me christening card and me bible and all that. I was  five when I was christenend. I had three or four behind me, following me...

A scene from “A Christmas Carol”  filmed in Shrewsbury. This is Fish Street, with the Bear Steps just off to the left. So, in Dec...

 I should never watch more than 2 hours of TV at night and I certainly should not then go to bed and read a thriller until 1.30 in the mo...

There I was, thinking I would manage to post every day during the 24 days of Advent; okay then, I admit defeat. Who was it who said “the ...

Every year I put candles on a large wooden plate, and arrange pine cones and small pieces of tree bark, sprayed golden, around them. ...