The Phoenix Vegetarian Restaurant & Accommodation

23/09/2026

23/09/2026

22/09/2026

Mum has been successfully launched into her 91st year.
She is doing pretty good. This morning she just completed her on line shopping order and successfully negotiated Warwick Hospital switchboard.
She attends, weekly guild chapel service closely followed by a regular coffee morning. A monthly poetry, group, play reading & book club. She goes on outings to the theatre, buys lots of nice dresses and is rarely seen without her lippy. At W.I, she is currently knitting large red poppies.
She want to suggest the Turkish restaurant for her book club, Chrismas do
She has plenty of external help, and thanks to, and in no particular order, Family, friends, neighbours, careers, cleaners, gardeners, and the amazing taxi drivers who go above and beyond, she can deal with her life pretty well. She cooks, loves fresh green veg & local fruit, olive oil, spices and herbs, dark chocolate the inevitable porridge, and prunes,
A spicy curry, hot water🥳 occasionally with a wee drop of the hard stuff, G&T and very very hot & fluffy cappuccino. She sits out front almost daily, collecting waves, smiles and a pleasant word or two from passers-by.
She loves her large, multi -generational tribe, and she will pick this up somewhere by default on social media.
It's the modern world and in her 10th decade she is part of it

22/09/2026

I am waiting for a flight in Dublin airport at the hub of civilisation,eating an egg & crisp butty for which the purchase of, needed a degree in quantum physics & the sandwich already haa the beginning of a curl.
My flight up from Kerry was late, so after overtaking the fray, I was gratefully slipped panting through a secret door had my boarding pass scanned efficiently by a kindly yellow coat.
Wth pumping heart & minutes to spare I saw my connecting plane was delayed.
Slowly sipping my G&T, suddenly there is a premature call to board, followed by a hasty scrabbling to gather possessions. It's all trickery. There is as yet no plane in view. But the Stairwell squish game commences.
I sit quietly, observing.
Ahead of me are 4 Sikhs, Immaculately turbaned & bearded carrying tall, bulbous, cased sitars.
On plods the queue & meanwhile our plane has taxied in, speedily spewing out ear budded people, limbs unfolding, animated, talking into the ether .
Sharp nosed attendants are doshing out fines on bags inches too high, power & moodiness are dangerous combinations
The Sikh quartet are getting checked for the b word. It's confusing for the yellow jackets as all the sitars have boarding passes with window seats, 4 inanimate objects called Mr. Guitar & defying all regulations as fundamentally sitars are ancient dried lacquered & exquisitely decorated pumpkins that for generations have played complex morning & evening ragas in undulating sonic intervals of outstanding beauty. Mysterious.
The beeping continues. I join the Stairway to heaven 60£ lighter.
The crowded stairs stink of false news, but we plough on shoulders nudging, helpful, a smile, kids crying, so close to the off.
We are seated, counted clickety-click, more delay, there is afumbling at the doors, & an anouncement is made Waiting for fuel!. Belted, mindful. Sorry for the delay, repeats our pilot, There is only one runaway functioning in Dublin . Story telling.
One imagines a vertical M25 styled runway, jets zooming left & right. There is a sharp intake of breath as we sit stunned, staring at the boeing 737 safety instructions pasted to our neighbours' chair back.
Flying is not for wimps