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 | Sep 26, 2018 | art, childhood, General interest, history, people, travel
Not long ago UK voters chose ‘serendipity’ to be their favourite word though it only entered the English language about 270 years ago. It was invented by Horace Walpole – son of the first British prime minister, Robert Walpole – in 1754 from the Persian story of The...
by Valerie | Jun 19, 2018 | art, childhood, General interest, history, Italy, museums, people, travel
Some years ago I was having dinner in a handsome brick townhouse built in the early 1700s when a small soft piece of leather with a ribbon in a bow was passed around – a tiny child’s shoe. It had just been found under centuries-old plaster, recently removed to...
by Valerie | Jun 13, 2018 | childhood, General interest, history, museums, people, theatre, travel
If we define a city as a town with a cathedral, then Lichfield is a city. Its grubby cathedral standing proud in its walled precinct would ‘lose its face’, I was told, if cleaned because the local reddish stone crumbles under jets of water. Inside there was a buzz of...
by Valerie | May 29, 2018 | childhood, General interest, history
Here in Yorkshire white-flecked hedges mark out meadows, pastures and wheat fields. There are even mayflower woods clinging to hillsides. Where the hawthorn hasn’t been trimmed beside the roads, it grows into low trees waving bouquets of tiny-petalled flowers. When...
Recent Comments