This beautiful watercolour by Eric Ravilious, painted in 1938, 39 X 52 cm actual size, is of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where I spent many happy weekends in the 70s and 80s. I came across this picture just now in an exhibition catalogue from 2004, ant thought it captured the very essence of Aldeburgh, not as […]Read Post ›
I read somewhere that if you have two or more items of the same kind then that makes the beginning of a collection. Last week I wrote about a special camel shaped inkwell my mother had brought back from Nazareth in 1946 or 47. This one however I know nothing about. It belonged to my […]Read Post ›
I was born in Earls Court, right in the middle of the Polish corridor as it was known in the fifties and sixties,but I’ve written about that before. When I was small my father and I would frequently wait on Platform 1 for a train to Victoria – he would often take me to the […]Read Post ›
This is one of my most treasured possessions. Made of olive wood I believe, it has been part of my consciousness all my life. When I was small my mother would not let me touch it – I was quite clumsy as a child – so it gained a mystery that never quite went away. […]Read Post ›
Stephen and I were exhausted. For the best part of the week we had been travelling without knowing where we were going, where we were going to stay, what we were going to do , or whether we would be able to afford it. Crazy, really, but it wasn’t as stressful as it might have […]Read Post ›
It is not far apparently from Padua to Venice. I could look it up I suppose, but I am not going to. Believe me when I say the train journey felt as if we could have walked faster, even carrying our enormous jerry cans. As the train crawled along we looked out of the window […]Read Post ›
Our Dutch friends in San Damiano were very jolly. Cheerful to the point of annoyance as far as I was concerned, but Stephen chatted away to them and they had lots of things in common. Especially a belief in the power of holy water. San Damiano had some sort of spring, and sipping some of […]Read Post ›
The bus was full of Dutch pilgrims who we soon found out – using English – were heading to exactly the same place as us. Eventually the bus stopped and then we walked. The surrounding area was beautiful, slightly hilly, a few trees, a few clouds and some green and yellow fields. Idyllic. […]Read Post ›
An old war time friend of my father’s lived in Milan with his wife and five children, and said he would pick us up at the airport. We arrived at about 10 pm and waited. Looked around and waited some more. Tried to telephone but without success. Tried to phone my father in London […]Read Post ›
It was the end of May 1975. I had come back early from my year abroad in Spain – specifically in order to vote to join Europe in the referendum of that year. And what a difference to all our lives that vote made. I came back at the end of May, the vote was […]Read Post ›
