There’s a drainage ditch runs alongside the rail trail where we often take our morning stroll. It runs with water after rain and provides an excellent damp environment for the cardinal flower (lobelia cardinalis). It’s a showy deep red spiky flower native to the US. Apparently most insects find it difficult to navigate the long tubular flowers so the cardinal…
The Background One evening in the spring of 1919 a soldier in his uniform appeared at the front door of 115, Strathyre Avenue, Norbury, London. Frances Sims knew who it was immediately. It was her husband – Lance Corporal Frank Herbert Sims, known as Bert. The only problem was that Lance Corporal Sims had died at Taranto, Italy in January. …
When intelligence officer Arthur Marshall was on the beach at Dunkirk in 1940 he turned to the work of Angela Brazil for psychological support. Wounded in the ankle, he encouraged his men to face enemy fire and so reach the awaiting ships with: “Come on, girls, who’s on for the Botany Walk?” In his autobiography he explained how he managed…
When I first became a head of school I had this daft idea that I would make personalized cut-and-paste greetings cards for every member the faculty and staff. It was daft on a number of levels including the sheer daunting nature of the task and the time it would take that I didn’t have. But I set to work that…
Amazing how hard it sometimes can be to find things on the intertubes. There was a poem I remembered from my London teaching days and I tried every which way to find it. It was about fruit piled up in a market so I tried all kinds of variations on a search theme and came up with nothing. I even…
Novelists and film makers often struggle to find the right period details to anchor their work in a particular era. And when it’s a much mined time and place – London in WW2 for example – it often results in rolling out the same set of shorthand cliches. You know the drill – the air raid siren, a gas mask…
Apparently it’s International Cat Day (where do all these days come from?) So – as I live with an international cat it seems like a good opportunity for a profile of said animal companion.
Two quite different wartime farewells at Charing Cross Station: The first is from Vera Brittain on the eve of 1915: At Charing Cross, with half an hour to wait for the last train to Purley, we walked together up and down the platform. It was New Year’s Eve, a bright night with infinities of stars and a cold, brilliant moon;…
The sandwich was no comfort, it was a pale limp thing a long way from the déjeuner sur l’herbe of her imagination. . . . Recently she had bought a new book, by Elizabeth David — A Book of Mediterranean Food. A hopeful purchase. The only olive oil she could find was sold in her local chemist in a small bottle. ‘For softening…
As America wakes up this Sunday morning it is confronted with the horror of two major acts of domestic terrorism. America is being dragged down – bump, bump, bump on the head – as the atrocities mount up. It is thanks to a white nationalist race-baiter squatting in the White House. And a Republican Party rendered inert and spineless by…
It’s hard to cut through the clutter and fog of an overcrowded political field. But Elizabeth Warren did it this week. The debates were not conducive to any kind of discussion of issues beyond sound bite point scoring. They were structured for personal zingers and not for any exploration of policy differences. All that time spent on health care but…
We are well into the election season although the actual vote is well over a year away. This time in 2020 we will know our Democratic presidential candidate. It’s a crowded field and candidates must find a way to distinguish themselves from the pack. Right now we have four clear leaders – Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth…
Buy local. If you live in a city, town or village you probably appreciate the local amenities. These include the local shops. If you want to preserve your neighborhood then buy local. Small independent stores and businesses are under siege and we need to support them if we care about preserving our neighborhoods. Let’s imagine a densely populated city like…
She never! She did! Well blow me A right carry-on What a palaver It’s always something More out than in so they say You could have knocked me down with a feather Well I should say so …
Soodle – it means means to walk in a slow or leisurely manner; to stroll, saunter. With so many alternatives to the word ‘walk’ it seems superfluous to promote more. But “soodle” just seems so right especially for this time of the year when it takes effort to move at all when the heat is high and the humidity stifling.…