Musings
William Ellory Channing was a Transcendentalist poet, born in 1818 in Boston, Massachussets. Channing wrote about the importance of being true to yourself: ‘To live content with small means – to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich – to study hard,…
Venice was once a water-logged destination for those escaping the plague on mainland Italy. It became one of the most powerful Italian republics, a great maritime power, and centre for the world’s finest art and music. Today the city seems to be drowning under the weight of its success. Each year it’s invaded by tourists…
East London Federation of Suffragettes Didn’t know that it’s 100 years since the start of the First World War? Unlikely. You can’t move for TV and radio programmes dedicated to it, local talks, ceremonies, commemorations, exhibitions… No, this centenary is something that we are all very much aware of. But what of the anti-war movement?…
18 July 2013 As I walked up the road to Leila’s Café in Shoreditch – a familiar place where I’ve had many a delicious breakfast, almost sharing a table with Keira Knightley once, but I digress – I mused on the fact that very soon I was going to have dinner with a bunch of…
This is my first hive and it’s been a real roller-coaster of a year. On the first decent day we’ve had in months, the bees came out to collect pollen. Following a terrible winter, then a cold and wet spring, I wasn’t sure they’d survived. I’ve had a few bee ‘anxiety’ dreams since I got…
June 2012 I’m looking forward to going back to Rimini. The last visit was back in 1970, on a ’round Europe’ caravanning holiday with my parents and three sisters. I was nine years old. Needless to say, with four girls ranging in age from seven to seventeen, there were tensions. The eldest, going through a Garbo…
The Mille Miglia is one of the most famous classic car races in the world. As a participant in the Blogville project in Bologna, I got to hang out in the VIP area. It was an opportunity to get close to the sort of cars that I’d recently drooled over in Modena’s Ferrari museum. Some…