Chinese calligraphers write poems in water on stone slabs which evaporate before completion. A Cambodian fisherman, his extensive family long ago butchered by the Khmer Rouge, lights the candles on a bamboo model of his boat and bows in gratefulness that the Mekong river has accepted his sacrifice. In a village on the west ofRead More
It’s time for another day in Canterbury. Since taking up care of a senior person resident in the city there have been many days spent here. On the train down I am close to finishing Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, the classic science fiction novel that literary types allow themselves to read. Its storyRead More
It sits on the edge of the Northumbrian coast, an intermittent island joined twice a day to the mainland by the tides, before retreating into isolation once more. It lies low, save for a plug of rock on the eastern side, on which sits a small, sixteenth-century castle. The island is viewable down much ofRead More
For the last few months of his life, the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh lived in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. He had been discharged from the clinic at Saint-Rémy where he had been treated for mental disorder, moving to Auvers to be near to local doctor Paul Gachet and his brother Theo, resident inRead More
I do not expect hotels to be exceptional. I want them simply to be functional, a comfortable base from which to explore. The luxury hotel, by that measure, is a nonsense, because it could be anywhere. You must want to get out of your hotel as much as you hope to like staying in it.Read More
Let’s go to Australia. We have family in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. We’ll visit the three cities in turn, one week each. We’ll take notes and photographs to document our memories. We’ve been to Sydney and Brisbane, so let’s fly on to Melbourne. You’ll like Melbourne, so said everyone. So we did. There is nothingRead More
Let’s go to Australia. We have family in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. We’ll visit the three cities in turn, one week each. We’ll take notes and photographs to document our memories. Having started with Sydney, let’s fly on to Brisbane. Nothing is more disorienting than to arrive in the middle of an unknown city. EveryoneRead More
Let’s go to Australia. We have family in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. We’ll visit the three cities in turn, one week each. We’ll take notes and photographs to document our memories. We’ll go to Sydney first. First sight, a thin line of sunrise-red stretching along the ocean horizon before we make land at Botany Bay.Read More
Next up in the reviews of my year is a year in the Lake District. It wasn’t a year as such, but it was five weeks, over three holiday periods, the longest I have spent over twelve months in a part of the country that means a lot to me. Below are favourite photos thatRead More
Walking along some fellside path in the Lake District, grey skies and a gentle drizzle, suddenly I am able to fly upwards. Hovering high above the hills, fields and waters, I can see the lattice-work of tracks, paths and roads that intersect across the land. With this map-like view of the terrain I view acrossRead More