Long wait in the palatial Milan Central station, in the marbled Bistro but I had made it.  Worries now were crossing the Swiss border, and the Lugano Lucerne connection.  Dodgy?  Queues?  Red tape?  Delays? So in the train and here I was, lst class for the mountains!  Off we went, via the triumphal arches which were Mussolini’s signal boxes.   Stopped at an unremembered station, wait of a few minutes while three officials strolled along, chatting, on their backs  written DOUANE.  So, that was the border!  Into Switzerland. Along a great lake to Lugano, and here was my Lucerne train on...

  Italy – June 2024 I was asked by Michael Marriott, rose expert, to give a talk in Italy, by the Italian lakes, Rose Symbolism through the Ages.  At a hotel owned by a rose enthusiast.  Would I?!  I couldn’t believe my luck.  I got to work on the talk, the slides to go with it, I had Geordie holding a red rose for love, and the man in Winchester converting old slides into pictures for my new laptop, I bought a flight to Milan … but, I didn’t tell many people.  I knew it could all vanish like a mirage.  (And, life being what is is, who in my elderly book club would be thrilled on...

Margot says you must see Kaffe Fassett at the Dovecot!  Kaffe Fassett?  It rings a bell, yes, at Alf and Niki’s wedding he and another gay man admired the jacket I was wearing.  It was faded black cotton, embroidered with pale yellow suns that I’d bought at a market in Dali, China for 20 dollars.  I was pleased at the compliment but when he introduced himself I’d never heard of Kaffe Fassett, quilter, embroiderer extraordinaire.  Since then I have, and wish I had talked and asked more.  So now in Edinburgh, off to the Dovecot.  On the walls are dozens of brilliant...

2023 Late April in Edinburgh 67 bus stop at North Bridge, then nearly an hour on the 67 to Pencuik. winding through  suburbs with the prim little houses (based on crofts?), warehouses and shopping centres of south Edinburgh, and sometimes glimpsing the Pentland Hills.  Thank heavens builders don’t put houses on hills unless they have to, they want it flat, leaving jagged country gloriously free.   A few fields and then – sorry Scotland – a typical mean Scotch village, Rosslyn.  The driver calls, and several of us get out. A fancy visitors centre, crowded, lies at the end of a lane.  £7.50...

Greece, Greece, we must go to Greece, says B.  He’s 91.  I get tickets. Why am we so smitten by Greece?  From the first time I saw Athens, coming in by bus and glimpsing the Parthenon floating on the Acropolis I have loved the place. Forget the slavery, men’s views on women, their bellicosity and infighting, that touchy Achilles, their religion which has nothing of transcendence or universal love, and think of the Greek love of beauty – the sight of a beautiful naked body! (why did this vanish with Christianity?) – their curiosity and friendliness, their openness to every idea. ...