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...
> MOREItaly – 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...
> MOREMargot 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...
> MORE2023 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...
> MOREGreece, 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...
> MOREOver the new bridge and the blue Gulf of Corinth onto the Peloponnese. A peninsula. PATRAS Industrial buildings all the way to the port of Patras, happily not that far. We are disgorged at the dock for Italian ferries. No hotel booked, but eventually a taxi comes and I tell him the Astir Hotel because my ipad showed a swimming pool on its roof. A large, dark, shiny impersonal hotel, used for conventions, weddings and the like. Yes, a room, and when we get there it is a view (oh how views matter!) across the gulf to Byron’s...
> MOREMay 2022. A lift to Cheesefoot Head. The distant blue chimneys are Fawley Oil Refinery on Southampton Water (?). Wheat, here not tall yet. Path strewn with massive flints. Apron of open downland spreads out for miles. Sporadic sun lights the ground with fleeting, angels. Path becomes hedged. Jack-by-the-Hedge, also known as Garlic Mustard for its smell when rubbed (must try). Blue ground ivy. Blue self heal. Mostly coarser than the flowers of spring. Sapphires of speedwell. White butterflies, and cow parsley which I imagine wafts a gentle...
> MOREMaybe days of long distance walks are over – Bob is nearly 91 and I don’t like to leave him too long – besides, I can’t do more than eight miles a day or rather, it feels too much, it ends being a weary tramp. Anyhow, during the Covid years, 2020 and 2021, it was only local walks, and now the pubs have reopened, what could be better than ending at a pub with Bob there to take me home? Sometimes I take a bus to the starting point. Sometimes Bob leaves me somewhere, and I get the bus back to Alresford. What has transformed my...
> MORETwo long Covid years, not going anyway except to Landmark buildings with the family – great but there’s rain, shopping, washing up and cooking – we take it in turn. These days I am slow, and Bob’s walking is poor. He says mournfully, I’ll never go to Egypt again … But, Margot and I look up flights, and there are cheap EasyJet flights to Hurghada on the Red Sea. We are booked! Geordie buys me three prints from the bookshop, torn from old books, of Luxor from the water, Valley of the Kings and Plain of Thebes. The Covid...
> MORESpitalfields – the name comes not from spittle but from Hospital – St Mary’s Hospital in the in the middle ages. Now it’s the liveliest part of London. It doesn’t have the dead feel of Belgravia, or the cheap tourist vibe of Oxford Street. Here, Brick Lane has Bangladeshi, Korean, Vietnamese, French restaurants, for locals. It has a shop with nothing but varieties of Turkish delight. I meet artist nephew Nick in the nearby market – he says, let’s eat here, but I say no, I’m not sitting on a bench munching a van...
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