The landlord of the pub in the village where I used to live had his fiftieth birthday party yesterday. My old house and the pub were separated by a memorable line of Scots Pine trees, the view from my windows…
It is one of those days. Getting towards the middle of June when England is traditionally looking its best with all that fresh greenery, the high point for our wild flowers and, of course, the time for endless blue skies,…
I know that it sounds so terribly arty-poncy but I have been writing a fair amount of poetry recently and, even worse than that, I have been doing some poetry reading too. Heaven help him, people who know me will…
Perfectly good chicken’s eggs went to waste yesterday in London. Some anti-Fascist protesters threw them at the two new British National Party MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) and sent them scurrying away from a planned press conference. The eggs…
This site owes a great debt to Mirek Topolanek, the former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Last week I wrote a series of pieces on Czech subjects because, well, I just felt like it – and why not? He…
Someone I used to know told me once that he hated clarinets. Why? I thought thinking of the wonderfully languid opening of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and then Mozart’s heart-breakingly beautiful Clarinet Quintet. As is usually the case when people…
Whilst all around me are talking about the passing of the Gordon Brown government here in the United Kingdom, I thought of Mark Twain’s adage “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” If only Gordon Brown could come…
Nelahozeves – I didn’t know how to pronounce it then and I still don’t now but finding these old photographs taken one moody November day in 1990 reminded me of a strange and potentially ill-advised trip into Bohemia all those…
There must be something about the thought of the former Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek relaxing naked in Silvio Berlusconi’s Sardinian holiday villa because suddenly this site has attracted a host of Czech readers (see yesterday). He is seen here…
I guess we all know that sex sells newspapers that was why I cheekily mentioned everyone’s favourite three-letter word the other day when I wanted to grab people’s attention for a piece about poetry. World news today is dominated, or…