It may have passed you by that last week was the 50th Anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. On 25 April 1974, suddenly and almost bloodlessly, the Estado Novo, a fascist dictatorship that had endured for 48 years, came to an end. I was a first-year student at The Queen's College Oxford at the time: the…
I realise I am not going to get a lot of sympathy, but owning a second home brings a second set of problems. On our visit last month I was relieved to see that the builder had finally repaired the leaking roof of the lean-to, which back in November was causing rainwater to find its…
I knew something was afoot a soon as I picked up the envelope. In the past it has been a short letter to say that everything was fine - which is what Anne had the previous week. But this time there was a letter with a leaflet about bowel cancer screening and a plan of…
We had visited India twice before (once to Delhi-Jaipur-Agra-Varanassi, and once to Tamil Nadu and Kerala) but never previously considered going for winter sun and a swim in the sea. It is a lot further than the Canary Islands. Nine hours to Mumbai, then a frenzied change of plane for the short hop to Goa…
As I have already recounted (at least once) in 1979, on my return to Oxford from London, I accidentally co-founded a band you've never heard of called One for the Wall. We never got a recording contract but it was fun while it lasted. We went our own ways a few years later, but -…
I refer to the so-called Festive Season. Myself, I quite enjoyed it - although it wasn't so good for Anne and her father, who both caught Norovirus. Somehow I avoided it. We went up to Wirral to see Mum before Christmas, then endured a long and complicated train journey home (storm damage to the overhead…
Our local postal service continues to be "patchy" (i.e. so rubbish it featured on BBC News), so once again we've bashed out a long and rambling review of the year as an alternative-cum-back-up to sending cards. *** Happily, 2023 was a lot better than 2022, which was dominated by the battle to install Colin's parents…
Is November the most miserable month of the year? Dark (even in London) by four in the afternoon, raining more often than not, and often surprisingly cold. That the clocks have just gone back hardly alleviates the gloomy atmosphere. And the knowledge that winter hasn't even started yet. Oh dear. Only a couple of months…
It's a year since my father died. A year to the day since I was advised to go immediately to his care home, because he had not long to live. In the end - because of late-running trains - I did not get there before Dad passed away. I arranged his funeral and reception, applied…
You may already have seen jaw-dropping pictures of medieval buildings perched on towering rocks. This is Meteora, in Northern Greece. Convent of Roussanou There are six surviving monasteries (and several ruined ones), four of which we visited over two days: namely, the Great Meteoron, Varlaam, Roussanou and Ayios Nikolaos Anapafsa. They appear to be impregnable…
The Wight Stuff 