by Valerie | Nov 29, 2018 | Uncategorized
Ginnels or snickets as they are often called in Yorkshire, small alleys almost tucked out of sight. People emerge out of them unexpectedly, as if from nowhere. They lead to carpet warehouses, tiny trinket or joke shops that come and go, rarely there when one seeks... by Valerie | Nov 21, 2018 | 1950s, art, childhood, Fifties, General interest, horse riding, horses, people
It may be the approach of winter but now, instead of looking up at a stone retaining walls beside the rutted track in Tuscany where I imagine I’m walking in the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci, I’m looking down at what is underneath my shoes, travelling from ruts to... by Valerie | Nov 13, 2018 | childhood, General interest, history, people, travel, Uncategorized
He was well into middle age before my sister and I were born. We were told to keep away when he fell into an inexplicable rage for no reason we could understand. ‘It’s shell shock,’ we were eventually told, but were none the wiser. All he said was that he was wounded... by Valerie | Nov 7, 2018 | 1950s, art, Fifties, General interest, history, Italy, people, travel
If you crossed the mountains to the east of the once malarial, now drained Tuscan valley of the Val di Chiana into the Tiber valley in search of the enigmatic painter Piero della Francesca, you used to pass woodland clearings with the huts of charcoal burners, their... by VT | Nov 1, 2018 | Italy
I first noticed flowers with a tight mass of red petals one June in the garden of the Medici villa at Castello, north of Florence. They were on a large bush or small tree with masses of shiny dark green leaves and looked like the flowers in a paradise garden on a...
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