Literature
A Train Journey
We woke up at 6 o’clock, packed our packs and clutching our 2nd class, reserved berth tickets caught our favourite rickshaw for the 10 minute journey to Margao station where our train to Bangalore was [more…]
Postcard
21st Century
Postcard From Birmingham, Part Eight
Puffins will be devasted to read this is the last episode of Postcard From Birmingham. But thrilled to hear myself and Mrs AWS have been saving up our pennies and coordinating our days off to [more…]
21st Century
Postcard From Birmingham, Part Seven
Shall we climb the Minecraft Library of Birmingham as far as Mrs AWS’s iffy-with-heights wobbly legs will take her? Find a balcony and enjoy the vista? Yes, we will, and we’ll take a few photos [more…]
Literature
A Letter From India
After qualifying, I’d worked in Basildon for four years before deciding that there was more to life than staring into people’s mouths. I’d met a girl and we decided that we would give up our [more…]
19th Century
Postcard from Birmingham, Part Six
In recent weeks we have allowed ourselves to be distracted by summer riots, 1980s football matches and pop concerts, the Falkland Islands and even the delivery of mail to the South Pole at Christmas. Puffins [more…]
Hobbies
In the Fens
It takes a week to cycle from Penzance to Berwick. It took me 40 years. Because on the way, I wanted to include every town in England, in what amounted to some two years of [more…]
20th Century
Postcard From Birmingham, Part Five
There are two schools of thought, volunteer for everything, never volunteer for anything. I knew a chap sent to the South Atlantic. At Mount Pleasant airfield in what the Guinness Book of Records describes as [more…]
History
Postcard from Saint Nicholas
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, Keir Starmer is stealing pennies from the old man’s hat, and we continue our journey around the Isles of Scilly. Tresco was once called St Nicholas, or [more…]
20th Century
Postcard From Birmingham, Part Four
Earlier this year, as my wife and I passed Birmingham’s Town Hall during our day trip from the North, we hummed Mendelssohn’s Elijah which debuted in the city’s triennial music festival of 1846. At that [more…]