by Valerie | Mar 4, 2020 | childhood, General interest, history, Italy, people, travel, writing a novel
Gretel and Zita It is a strange coincidence that a book about a mayor and a bear in a north Italian mountain town is published, just when young people worldwide are questioning the human species’ relationship to and role in climate change and the floods that devastate...
by Valerie | Feb 26, 2020 | General interest, history, people, travel
When one reaches the ‘height’ of one’s ambition, it is presumed – or hoped – that one will stay up there for a while. When there is a ‘peak’ in one’s fortunes, a fall is predicated. The only way to continue along the relentless tread of time is downhill. Better,...
by Valerie | Feb 19, 2020 | General interest, history, Italy, people, travel, Uncategorized
Aura – a breath of golden hue around a special person. We can all feel it at a particular place or in unusual circumstances, when the intensity of the lived moment thrills one almost into a momentary state of extasy close to fainting. The mind blanks out for a...
by Valerie | Feb 5, 2020 | art, General interest, history, museums, people, travel
On a chilly Sunday, we went out to celebrate a birthday, all three generations of us. We chose a restaurant in the remains of a Jacobean gatehouse set in a wide lawn with space for children to play. We parked near the large gnarled trunk of an ancient tree,...
by Valerie | Jan 29, 2020 | 1950s, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history, people, travel
My earliest memory is uncannily relevant to the events remembered this week. I was sitting with my elder sister in our ‘tree house’ intrigued by the pulley with a basket at its end. We could lower it to be filled with sandwiches and, if we ate them, down again for a...
by Valerie | Dec 16, 2019 | 1950s, art, Fashion, Fifties, General interest, history, people, travel
A few thoughts before Christmas Are all – or most – happy memories bathed in sunshine outside? Or inside? Or does remembrance make them so? Now, in a dark moment as 2019 slides away, shards shine through impending darkness in no particular order, thrown up...
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