Baking a “free-from” cake everyone round the table could eat
Days of yore
While rifling though a stack of scrappy notes the other day, I came across a dog-eared piece of paper, all scribbles and question marks, a streak of wiped-away ingredients blurring some words.
It took me a while to decode it.
When I did, it brought back a rush of memories centered around conviviality and cake. The nostalgia I felt for getting myself into a mild state of panic over something as unthreatening as a cake was intense.
Ah for those halcyon days when popping ‘round a friend’s house was something we could do without the risk of passing ‘round a…
A Poem
A poem about the Scrum values of courage and openness
Welcome my friends, do gather round
For a grizzly a tale as can be found,
OK, not quite grizzly but still a tale
Of mistakes and woe and a project fail.
Perchance you’ll blanch when I confess
Our project seemed like a success,
We iterated and delivered,
At release sign-off I barely quivered,
Confident all would be impressed,
Imagine, then, quite how distressed
I was to find they did not care,
They behaved as if I wasn’t there;
A poem that looks like it ought to rhyme (but doesn’t)
Swaying in time as with weft and warp
Hoppoloi dreamt he heard the harp
Played by Lonia upon a bough
When he was woken by a messenger’s cough.
Lovely Lonia, his one sweet love
For whom he would mountains move
Had received a mortal wound
And now lay buried in cold ground.
The news to him was like a blow
It made him weep, rage and bellow.
He swore to avenge her life with war
And nothing would his purpose bar.
He pledged he’d never compromise
His quest now he had made his promise:
Without a pause, without a word,
He took up…
We only see these flamboyant fliers for a brief portion of their lives
Season’s end
There are still golden days left in the year. You know the ones.
The sun is warm enough to pleasantly tickle your skin and the breeze blows softly, hemmed with the only tiniest threat of winter.
Here in the east of England, summer is ending. The fens are beginning to accumulate more water. But for now, you can still hop over dips squelchy with rain and sidle round the muddy patches.
And it’s the perfect time to catch sight of the last of this season’s dragonflies.
From nymph to dragonfly
We have around 24 species of dragonflies and damselflies in the wet habitat of…
A Poem
There are many songs about
The power of the heart
But I love you with all of me,
With each and every part:
I love you with my liver,
I love you with my toes,
I love you with my ankles,
My stomach and my nose.
I love you with my kidneys,
I love you with my arms,
I love you with my ribcage,
My legs, my spleen, my palms.
I love you with each eyeball,
I love you with each lung,
I love you with my cellulite,
My intestines and my tongue.
I love you with my wrists and…
A Poem
There is a jumble in the loft
Layer on layer of dusty letters
Toys and hard-backed books from the eighties
A card for the two-year-old I once was
That is over-bright and cheery
Because that was the done thing
Then
There is junk in the attic
Tier on tier of musty jackets
Shoes and shoulder-pads from the nineties
A costume for the twelve-year-old I once was
That my Mum made out of scraps
Because that’s what people did
Then
There’s history under the roof
Pile on pile of fusty blankets
Files and study books from the noughties
An essay by the twenty-year-old I…
Farah Egby
Software Agilist, Erstwhile Scientist, Music Dabbler and Amateur Human Being.
