5K to Couch

 “5K to Couch”- Sporting Rise and Decline

 

We all live, some of the time, an internal life in which we are timeless entities – the same person, young, middle, and old. This is the person often active in our dreams. 

Looking Outside the Chocolate Box: John Constable

 Looking Outside the Chocolate Box: Noticing John Constable

 

 

I stood, in chilly early December 2021, on the edge of the water where Constable had set his celebrated painting now called The Haywain, but originally and more reservedly, Landscape: Noon.

 

Binham Priory

 Binham Priory

 

The Benedictines formed the earliest English monastic communities, starting with St Augustine at Canterbury. Rich and influential monasteries flourished in the Middle Ages, not least those attached to the great Cathedrals. Henry VIII brought an abrupt end. Their lands were confiscated and sold; their wealth seized.

La Mancha, Almagro, Ubeda

 La Mancha; Almegro; Ubeda

 

 

La Mancha is an area of Spain that many have heard of but perhaps few have visited. It is of course famous for being the home territory of Don Quixote. The local authorities have concocted, for the gullible tourist, somewhat implausible Quixote itineraries.

But the real interest, even on a two-day visit, lies elsewhere.

New Old Journeys: Oxford

 New Old Journeys- Oxford

 

 

One of the very few and small consolations of the first lockdown of March 2020 was the exploration of local areas that, in normal times, one wouldn’t explore because of the pull of more celebrated cultural or recreational attractions. This was in the course of the permitted “household walk” of no more than hour (although that limit turned out to guidance rather than law).

Channel Migration: A Modest Proposal

Country Houses; Ickworth

 Country Houses – Somebody’s Got to Live in Them

 

 

One battlefield of the present cultural wars concerns country houses, specifically those now in the care of the National Trust. It seems (what a surprise) that many of these, mainly dating from the time of the acceleration of Britain’s imperial achievements in the C18, were paid for by fortunes derived from slavery in the Americas.