A Disorderly Retirement
Jasper (the cat) doesn’t realise how much of a threat he is to the environment and he wouldn’t care if he did. In fact, he enjoys the best of all possible worlds: living in a comfortable, warm home with regular meals and doting owners, while following his own natural instincts without any conscience or –…
We have just spent two wonderful weeks in Andalucía in southern Spain, largely because of my ambition to visit the most beautiful and iconic Islamic architecture in the world. (The delicious food and wine was just a bonus.) Iran has fabulous treasures and even though visiting the country is looking a little uncertain at the…
I rather like Instagram – photos of exotic places are my favourite – but even the hardened cynics and eye-rollers among us need to keep our wits about us. You never know what will trigger unexpected and possibly unwelcome emotions. I have to confess to a bit of travel/lifestyle envy of a couple who live…
I have missed travelling. I know, it’s not a human right, but then neither is sloe gin and I’d miss that too if it were banished from my life. I know that many people have satisfied their urge to travel by touring around their own countries and discovering great beauty on their doorstep, which is…
I have just read an article about the importance of fun, which, predictably, made me worry that there wasn’t enough fun in my life. So I read the article very closely to find out if I was getting my allotted quota and if not, how I should go about it. Luckily the journalist Catherine Price…
I’ve been thinking about roots this week. Not the literal sort (although I see that the weeds are starting to appear between the paving stones already), but the figurative sort. I blame Lyse Doucet, the Canadian journalist who works as Chief International Correspondent for the BBC and lives in London when she’s not reporting from…
A person can have too much excitement in life. As if the dancing Knickerbocker Glory and Liquorice Allsorts from Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker weren’t enough, I then went to see Russell Brand performing his stand-up routine at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. I woke up the next morning in a state of bewilderment – what had…
I think the greatest pleasures might be the ones that take you by surprise. I went to see Matthew Bourne’s version of The Nutcracker last Saturday and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I have to admit that I’m not normally a big ballet fan, although I’m full of admiration for the dancers….
I have just completed a jigsaw called High Jinks. Now, before you get any ideas, it is a very sedate picture of bookshelves full of books written in the late 19th and early 20th century about and (presumably) for English girls. I don’t think boys read books about girls then and maybe they don’t now….
No-one wants to be reminded of Christmas in January. I have to admit that this Christmas was a great deal better than last year’s, which is not a time anyone wants to be remember, but still it’s just so last year, isn’t it? I was brought up in a household where Christmas did not officially…