Sunday 28 July  The only morning train left Orta station at 07.40, having travelled from Novara, so we crept out of the hotel via the white door into the underground garage (always open) at 07.00 and pulled or pushed our cases along tarmacadam roads up to the station. Hot work even before 08.00!  The train … Continue reading Switzerland 28 July – 2 August 2024: friends, mountains, glaciers; and Lake Geneva at Vevey

Monday 22 July Despite world-wide IT outages and dramatic weather causing weekend travel chaos on both trains and planes, we left Andover promptly on the 09.06 and reached Gatwick North by 11.00, with more than two hours to spare before our Easyjet flight to Milan Malpensa.  Nevertheless, life is rarely this simple. En route David … Continue reading Piemonte 26 : and a special birthday : July 2024

Now lost in the mists of time, memory and gender correctness, Guardian Women, formerly known as the Women’s Page within the Guardian broadsheet, was published just once a week. Was it on a Wednesday?  or was it Thursday?  I can just remember my mother’s excitement at its inauguration in 1957. I read it faithfully throughout the … Continue reading A grace day: Thursday 28 June 2024

Odds and ends from this late spring and early summer…. Ernest took part in a young people’s drama course, culminating in a performance in Winchester’s Theatre Royal (second from the left, below) and a prize for being the most engaged, which took us all by surprise. Later in June the sunshine singers also carried off … Continue reading Hampshire : April to July 2024