Category Archives: my life

Water – meanders

(After the New River – ) After the New River I began to think about water mills. And I received a recovered memory. In Bosnia in about 1969, (not that we knew at the time that it was Bosnia, we … Continue reading

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a walk in South East London

First I took the train from Stoke Newington to Liverpool Street and walked through our new little Manhattan off Bishopsgate to see the latest skyscrapers we used to call them and the weather was and has been for some time … Continue reading

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Olympus 5 – getting lost on the way to Ano Skotina, of walking and fairies

My journey to the ‘sweet little cabin in the woods’ started well, I took Campanula incurva as a good omen. The road up into the hills leaves the coast here. Agamemnon is advertised. I was about to leave my guides … Continue reading

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the back of Olympos

Last word on the little dragon from Edward Lear in Crete in 1864: ‘brutal-filthy yet picturesque’. My friends Jay and Tina also saw it in Crete, more recently. And Jay had a very different experience near Olympus: “In 1966 a … Continue reading

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Olympus 3 Dracunculus, tortoise, the monastery, Dresden, garden notes, etc.

Just outside Litochoro, right by the road, I came across a dracunculus – literally little dragon. When you’ve only ever seen something once it takes on special importance. I was driving slowly but you’d see it even if you flashed … Continue reading

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a celebration

I remembered a trip to the shore of the Thames with a few of the Putting Down Roots volunteers. We went to get stuff for our new rock garden in St George’s churchyard in the Borough, near London Bridge. See … Continue reading

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Laurieston Hall

May 2012. Laurieston I had another dream about Laurieston. Which toilet to use? Where’s my coat? Then I thought I’d like to take some soil away. So I filled a wheelbarrow, but put so much in that I couldn’t move … Continue reading

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from my diaries for 2016

I ordered some more sunflower seeds from the RSPB and at the end of the transaction appeared the phrase “I helped give nature a home”. Will nature give me one? July 9    from pocket to pocket, to the mantelpiece, … Continue reading

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the home fire burning, and rekindled

  After the old boys – well, chiefly Patrick Leigh-Fermor – (see the plant itself ) with their eloquent and scholarly non-stop talk of heroes, heat, old gods, pirates, ecstacies of alcohol, Venetian merchants, Frankish castles, peasant girls whose faces have … Continue reading

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The Hill of Time

    .   In The Hill of Kronos Peter Levi considers his various journeys to Greece. His first trip was in 1963. A night at Heathrow waiting for a long delayed flight to Milan gave him ‘romantic pleasure’. Then … Continue reading

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