Plant a pip, and you hope that it will grow. It will, in time, establish roots and shoot upwards, growing in depth while it reaches up to the light. It is how all stories must work. We begin at a point that is presented to us as the beginning, but which we soon learn isRead More
Some places have so little to tell about themselves, and that can be part of their appeal. Take Egypt Bay, for example. It’s a small bay on the northern coast of the Hoo Peninsula, that overlooked piece of land jutting out of the Kent mainland, caught between Essex and Sheppey. The River Thames flows byRead More
There are some small out-of-the-way landing-places on the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling. Running water is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running water for mine. I wish those words were mine. They fit so precisely with my thoughts and my locationRead More
It’s another sunny day. Today I shall visit Rochester, because Rochester is where I live, and to where I am confined in these days of Coronavirus lockdown, even as that lockdown is beginning to be eased. For the time being, Rochester is the world. Early morning Zoom call, talking to early evening Sydney. How quicklyRead More
For walkers in Kent there are some notable long-distance footpaths with which to get the measure of the county (and beyond). I’ve never had the time or application to walk the entire length of the North Downs Way, the Pilgrim’s Way or the Saxon Shore Way, but over the years I’ve walked along a goodRead More
A sturdy walking distance from here is Higham, a village midway on the main road from Rochester to Gravesend, with commanding views over the Medway valley and Thames Estuary. Here it was that Charles Dickens in his prosperous later years purchased a house that he had dreamed of living in when a child. His fatherRead More
What sad news that there is to be no second series of Dickensian, the superlative mashup of Charles Dickens’ characters by Tony Jordan, the Eastenders writer. Over twenty episodes the series ingeniously wove together back stories to Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Bleak House and A Christmas Carol, together with several other characters taken from Dickens’sRead More
Chemistry – well, technically chemistry is the study of matter. But I prefer to see it as the study of change. Now just think about this. Electrons, they change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements, they combine and change into compounds. But that’s all of life, right? It’s just the constant, it’s theRead More
My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond. In the latter state, no gipsy on earth is a greater vagabond than myself; it is so natural to me, and strong with me, that I think I must be theRead More