by VT | May 21, 2021 | childhood, General interest, horse riding
As a child, my biggest treat was to go to Chessington Zoo. I would look at the sky to see whether there was enough blue to make a pair of sailor’s trousers. If there was, we would board a train and then a bus to convey us to the promised treat. What was it that...
by VT | Apr 2, 2021 | childhood, General interest, history, people
EM Forster Isaiah Berlin I was playing ‘ducks and drakes’ on our local pond with two school friends when I felt a shiver of apprehension. A tall man appeared suddenly and stood silently watching us. He didn’t even greet us, just stood there and...
by VT | Sep 23, 2020 | 1950s, childhood, General interest, people, travel
The autumn equinox approaches the northern hemisphere with turbulence heralding winter. Now, as when I was a student returning from a summer to practise my tenuous knowledge of French, or Spanish or Italian, the travellers might still crowd the decks of cross-channel...
by VT | Sep 17, 2020 | 1950s, childhood, General interest, horse riding
High up on my list of pleasurable experiences is one involving drizzle or light rain. An ideal bedroom is one right under the roof so one might have the lullaby of the patter of rain on the roof tiles or slates. It provides the thin curtain outside the window as I...
by VT | Jul 29, 2020 | childhood, General interest
Having been sensitively and professionally tended by a massively overweight nurse in hospital, I am struggling to understand why the efforts, that seem to come in waves, to reduce obesity in Britain are so unsuccessful. For my nurse practitioner cousin, it is simply a...
by Valerie | May 6, 2020 | childhood, General interest, history, people, travel, writing a novel
In those days when I was determined to read all the many volumes of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, I did not choose to inhabit a padded room as Proust did. Instead, I was trying to read the third volume while walking up the steps to Montmartre followed by an...
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