My life on this, and other, enchanted isles
Ive got a soft spot for some of the traditional travel essays, like Palin and Coast but find it increasingly hard to accept the central conceit of these programmes ie that Palin has just turned up at some village and met some interesting characters by chance – when everyone knows its all been researched to […]
Read More Belgium – Jonathan Meades investigatesWhat better honour can there be than being immortalised in a traditional London Boozer? May not be the coolest photograph mind you – but there’s a plaque with photos to mark the fact that the George IV pub in Portugal Street (near Aldwych) now displays above its bar the nameplate from locomotive 86 421 (as […]
Read More George IV, Portugal Street, London WC1Lectures are the new rock n roll, or the new indie, or the new alt cinema or something. I’ve got no interest in laborious formal education. Tedious. People who have taught the same stuff too many times to people who are only there for a secondary reason – like they need to do a five […]
Read More Atmospheres 2 at the London Museum of Garden HistoryFrom a lunchtime lecture at the Institute of Northern Studies… Note that I’m paraphrasing – I may be printing the legend. William Cody (aka Buffalo Bill) wild west tableau took Europe by storm. He was the real enough deal – slaughtering native americans in the morning and performing in US theatres by night. This was […]
Read More Texas Bill Shufflebottom: Wild West impersonators in the North of EnglandI like still Northern places. On a work trip to Stockholm I stayed an extra day, got up early, and took one of the early ferries to the Archipelago. The ferries pinball from one island jetty to another, zig zagging their way in erratically described orbits to the furthest islands and return. It was October […]
Read More IngmarsoI like the ritual of football. And with non-league football you get more of it. The sunset behind the stand, the hot drink earned in the clubhouse as you stamp your feet to shake off the cold and the forgotten stadia of forgotten towns you end up at away games. True you don’t get the […]
Read More Shouting and sunsets