Tuesday 12 October Valentina, driving her beloved Cinquecento, arrived at La Romana promptly at 09.00. She freelances with the consorzio and other wine-related organisations putting her excellent English to good use as a guide and interpreter with real knowledge and love of wines, having qualified as a Sommelier. She also turns out to be wine … Continue reading Piemonte 3: Monferrato DOCG: 12 – 14 October 2021

Armed with the NHS vaccine pass, a negative covid antigen test and a successfully completed Travel Locator Form (assembling these added an extra day and shed-loads of worry to travel preparations) we set off at 07.30 for Stansted on Wednesday 6 October. The up train was late, and we lost half an hour en route … Continue reading Piemonte 2: Nizza Monferrato: 7 – 11 October 2021

This will be a brief record of five happy days in Lancashire and Yorkshire, firstly to celebrate a wedding, and secondly to try out the car! More will follow when the Piemonte adventure is chronicled!

It seemed a long wait before 17 May enabled people to eat indoors - and May was certainly a cold month. One of these two had a hot water bottle under her coat… Meanwhile the children were waiting for weather more suitable for cricket before shedding their coats - or their substitute helmets The bluebells … Continue reading At last – brief holidays and outings!

January: 2021 began chaotically. Schools opened on 5 January, only to close the next day for a second, full lock-down. Changes in Christmas arrangements had left many families disconnected, and the short, dark, cold January days compounded the misery of the stressed - furloughed perhaps, or working from home, caring for children, home-schooling - and … Continue reading 2021 – an even more surreal spring!!

I started this piece on Sunday 13 December 2020, exactly a year to the day since I woke up to the sickening news that the Conservative party, led by Clown Johnson, had won the General Election in December 2019 with a sizeable majority. It almost matched the bouts of nausea I felt in 2016 - … Continue reading 2020 – woe, woe and thrice woe…

As the summer holidays ended, schools re-opened and for many work re-started though for others work had either never stopped or worse, had completely disappeared. Masks and social distancing were the new part of the normal. So were near-empty trains and queues for shops. The National Gallery opened its postponed exhibitions - most notably the … Continue reading Autumn pastimes

It seemed a good move to organise a short break in the run-up to the Bank Holiday, and as it wouldn’t be a holiday if we didn’t visit a few wineries, we pottered east across the South Downs to visit three very different English Sparkling wine producers, en route for Romney Marshes. There are dozens … Continue reading This isn’t Italy ! August 2020

The thirteenth - and last week - of watching colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this surreal spring Sunday 14 June The river provides constant entertainment. We have watched fleets of ducklings, swans with their cygnets (which grow so quickly!) and Canada geese with goslings not to mention other, stranger river-goers … Continue reading Week 13: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring

The twelfth week of watching colour and beauty emerge on each and every day of this surreal spring Sunday 7 June Today was a day for admiring the river - its bank and its wildlife The blue campanula is in full flower, buzzing with hundreds of worker bees, and setting off the gunnera in all … Continue reading Week 12: Andover Garden Watch 2020 – a very special spring