by Valerie | Nov 27, 2019 | art, childhood, General interest, history, Italy, people, reading groups, theatre, travel, writing a novel
The loft – a child’s paradise. The place where parents put whatever they did not quite know what to do with but feared to throw away. Occasionally there is a sad moment when you silently watch bulging bin liners bumped down the stairs to a temporary store at the back...
by Valerie | Jun 19, 2019 | 1950s, art, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, people, travel, Uncategorized
Most days I allow myself a few minutes of fantasy exploring a zone chosen at random on the large globe on one side of my desk. I pause to wonder at the amount of land in the northern hemisphere and the wide expanse of sea in the southern one – a seemingly chance...
by Valerie | Jun 12, 2019 | 1950s, art, book reviews, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, Italy, people, poetry, reading groups, travel, writing a novel
Soon tennis will start at Wimbledon, rain permitting! The world-famous championships are about to begin in the prosperous, leafy suburb of London. It’s the season of long, languid summer evenings around the midsummer day on the 21 June, the longest day in the northern...
by Valerie | Mar 13, 2019 | childhood, General interest, history
People yearn for simplicity and clarity – it was ever thus. Now in the confusion surging round the whole question of Britain’s departure from the European trading group, many just want something clear-cut to happen and are fed up with what seem like unending quibbles...
by Valerie | Jan 9, 2019 | art, childhood, General interest, history, people, reading groups, travel
These fragments I have stored against my ruins’ – T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland (near the end) Still clear in my memory is the sense of freedom I felt as an eight-year-old when, in a class spelling bee, I went to the top of the line for remembering ‘Mississippi’...
by Valerie | Jan 2, 2019 | childhood, General interest, history, horse riding, horses, people, travel
Just as we were raising our glasses to usher 2019 in, with a quiver of apprehension, the illumination of the west front of the Minster outside faded into darkness. We were toasting darkness. Appropriately. Only half-admitted, the warm light of hope did not last into...
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