by VT | Dec 17, 2018 | General interest, travel
Quite irrationally I am irritated by the use of ‘season’s greetings’ at Christmas. If you do not wish to mention Christmas, why not just send greetings for the New Year instead? There are four seasons in most parts of the world, and in one of them, summer or winter... by Valerie | Dec 5, 2018 | art, Fashion, General interest, history, Italy, museums, people, travel
Fingers poised, I am about to type out a lecture on the period of art styled Mannerism, but am uncertain where to start. Yes, Florence again, not in the workshops that forged the talent of young Michelangelo and Raphael in the late 1400s, but in the Florentine court... 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 Valerie | Oct 15, 2018 | General interest, history, people, poetry, travel
‘O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing’ Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red …’ Last weekend I stood silently on the crest of a hill surveying the...
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