I am back from a great holiday
I I am back from a wonderful time in the Swiss Alps and then two great Italian cities where it was possible to see just how magnificent and rich in cultural and natural glories Europe is…..I will organize my photos…
Gone fishing – for art and fun – in Switzerland and Italy.
I am off on my holidays again, this time to Switzerland and Italy, and won’t be back until the 14th. August but I thought I would write something to entertain you, I hope, whilst I am away. When I was…
My visit to Florence to meet Donatello’s David
I shall be going to Florence in less than a week and I am truly excited about it. I stayed in the peerless Italian city of Florence in January 2008 – it was my first visit even though I had…
Our Prime Minister would like the World to see everything his way.
How nice to see the British Prime Minister, David Cameron flying the British flag in India. Nice is the word of course when talking about Mr Cameron. I suspect you would have to be very cynical indeed not to agree…
Barefoot potato farming
I have been experimenting in my small town centre garden here in Lewes, England. All year I have been using a really very small space to see just how much fruit and veg I can grow. After having a large…
The Pope is not just cool, he is a bit of a lad.
Well how cool is this then! The Pope has got another new look and, in my humble non-Catholic opinion, it is the best one yet. The Vatican tell us that he has adopted the dude look, though he never wears…
Growing fruit and vegetables in my small Lewes town garden
There was some harvesting to do this weekend, a small crop of peas fattened up in their pods even though I was only growing a few plants in an experimental spirit and they got willfully entangled in with my new…
Muttiah Muralitharan – an inspiration for a number of different reasons.
He might be jumping for joy but so should we all….the amazing Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lankan cricket hero last week achieved what is probably an impossible record to break with his 800th. wicket in international test match cricket. It…
Stanley Spencer, Chatham Docks and the dignity of labour
I was invited to the launch of a new Stanley Spencer exhibition, called Resonance and Renewal, the other day at the Chatham Dockyards in Kent where Spencer’s set of eight giant paintings of the Glasgow shipbuilders, recently restored, can be…
Teapots – china or metal? Should we care?
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the humble teapot. Not any old teapot of course but this classic of Twentieth Century design, the above illustrated tea-for-one, hinged-lid metal teapot. This revolutionary reworking of an English tradition was meant…