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Category Archives: my life
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
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
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
Posted in history, politics, language, my life
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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
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
A piece with people, for Sarah
I stayed recently in Anavriti, a village in the mountains of the Peloponnese, at Guesthouse Arhontiko, a wonderful, welcoming place.( the guesthouse ) Maria somehow combines running it and cooking great food with teaching French down in the valley in Sparta. Her … Continue reading
at a full stop in the Gasterntal
and how to go on? How to write on a subject about which I know next to nothing, but find myself drawn to? But first, one or two more deviations, diversions and prohibitions: 15. We moved to Cold Ashton, north … Continue reading
Posted in mountains, flowers, landscapes, my life, walks
Tagged Giant's Causeway, ireland, prohibitions, Stonehenge
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Deviations, Boundaries, Prohibitions, (revised)
In the end I went back a long way, realising how much my walks and walking have been influenced by prohibitions. My mother used to tell the story of how when I was three, I took my little sister Judy … Continue reading
Posted in mountains, flowers, landscapes, my life, walks
Tagged boundaries and prohibitions, Gasterntal, Giant's Causeway, greece, Peniarth Uchaf
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‘where moth doth not corrupt’ My memories of Yugoslavia are like gold in that they will not tarnish. Unlike the whale bones in the Hvalsalen in Bergen that Kathleen Jamie writes about in Sightlines, they don’t gather dust. They don’t … Continue reading
There’s an old photo on the kitchen wall. A camp site on the French Atlantic coast south of Bordeaux, in the foreground a pallet for a table looking oddly like a big chess board, with a baby’s bottle, a tin … Continue reading