Arts
Another Perfect Weekend
I wrote recently about the perfect weekend I enjoyed with my son when he had to get up North to join the rest of his band to play at the 2017 Workington Festival. Writing it [more…]
Travel
20th Century
Book Review: Mani, Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh-Fermor
It is no secret that I absolutely love the writing of Patrick Leigh-Fermor, a man whose life would have been wonderfully interesting even if he had never published a word. I sketched out something of [more…]
Arts
Postcard from Romania – Part Four
Part Three of the Postcard from Romania covered our visits to the indoor and outdoor sections of the terrific Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography (Muzeul Etnografic al Transilvaniei), a jaunt to Satu Mare on the wild [more…]
Arts
Postcard from Romania – Part Three
Part Two of the Postcard from Romania saw me waxing rhapsodic about the Museum of Pharmacy at the Mauksch-Hintz House in Cluj. After a fantastic visit, when we spent hours marvelling at the extraordinary collections, [more…]
20th Century
Somewhere West of Laramie
It was an evening in June 1923, and a Union Pacific train – “The Overland Limited” – was working its way west across the wilds of Wyoming. Onboard was Ned Jordon, president of the Jordan [more…]
Arts
Postcard from Romania – Part Two
Part One of the Postcard from Romania covered our arrival in the beautiful city of Cluj-Napoca, in May of 2018. In writing it, I tried to dispel just a little of the negative impression many [more…]
Arts
Return to Puffin Island
As there has already been a postcard from Lundy by Bassman, I am writing this as a complimentary continuation. A few years ago I spent a few days on the island with friends so had [more…]
Arts
Postcard From November, Part 5
Happy Birthday to Me My birthday is November 4th and as a child my main memory of it was always of my parents laying on a party for my friends who all turned up bearing [more…]
19th Century
Clevedon Pier
Clevedon is a small town in North Somerset, located on the English side of the Bristol Channel approximately 15 miles west of Bristol. It has a wonderful pier with an interesting history which I thought [more…]