In September 2022, after a wonderful time at the Sibelius Festival in Lahti, I stayed on in Finland for another week and moved to Helsinki, a place that everyone I know who has been there to told me that I…
This was in June 2022, my first foreign trip after Covid decided to keep us all home for a couple of years. I had been going on holiday to Italy annually for ten years. I love the place, the culture…
The hot days of the summer lockdown here in the UK have passed but now it’s second time round for the covid-19 precautions and, in classic English autumn style, it has been raining and, more importantly, it has got cold.…
I’ve been trying to get back to full fitness now for twenty months, nearly two years, after a difficult eight or so years of ill-health. A brain haemorrhage in 2008, and a pulmonary embolism a few years later, in 2013/14,…
As some of you know, I haven’t been too well this year so it was a great idea to spend two weeks in Venice this summer. I got back a couple of weeks ago and, even though I can’t report…
Last week, while I was staying in Paris, I visited the Tuilerie Gardens every morning to practice my Kungfu and Taichi – see Monday’s blog. I have been unable to commit to my White Crane Kungfu club for some time…
This was my Santa Margherita Ligure home for two weeks on my recent Italian Riviera holiday – I shall miss it. All thanks to my landlord Attilio De Pascalis who showed me round the town in so much detail on…
Tomasz Gudzowaty’s photographs of Shaolin monks bring together two of my passions – the awe-inspiring skills of kungfu and the inspirational nature of art photography. These pictures are from his book Shaolin Temple and they are without question magnificent visual…
Even though I have been lucky enough to have spent most of the last weeks abroad on holiday, first in Sicily and just recently the USA, I have been on a determined bid to get back into my martial arts…
I had breakfast with Neil Johnson, my kungfu instructor (see links for White Crane Fighting Arts) this morning, as has been usual now on a Monday morning for nearly two and a half years. During that time I have gone…