Short break: Margate things to do (even if it rains)
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- Created: 18 July 2017 18 July 2017
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We once spent a weekend in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. It rained steadily and heavily. We had a room in a cheap B&B. We had an energetic five year old with us. A lull gave us half an hour on the beach but the rest of the time was miserable. We divided it between some mediocre cafes and an arcade where our kid played air hockey (fun at least) and had her first taste of a shoot ‘em up video game (hmm....). We dived into a cinema that was showing Top Cat: The Movie. It was desperately awful, even our daughter thought so.
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Giacometti at Tate Modern
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- Created: 06 July 2017 06 July 2017
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Walking around the Giacometti exhibition at the Tate Modern there is an unmistakeable intensity in the air. It’s always been there since our first encounter in the sculpture garden of The Maeght Foundation, Saint-Paul de Vence in the South of France. Giacometti achieves something in his creations many other sculptors can only dream of; he imbues them with the fiction of life. The sensation of presence lasting only a split second, a first glance, emanates from the work in front of you.
Add a commentSummer reading? Poe of course.
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- Created: 19 June 2017 19 June 2017
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There is something about oppressive hear, when the air thickens and the sunlight bears down like a thing with mass. Movement slows and becomes more deliberate. Hurry is pointless.
Add a commentVisit to the house of Karloff
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- Created: 19 May 2017 19 May 2017
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It’s a sultry summer night, 23 July 1977. After much pleading, the thirteen year old me is allowed to stay up for the first half of BBC2’s double bill of horror. The film is Son of Frankenstein and I am sucked in by the heavy gothic atmosphere, the weird, expressionistic sets and lighting, the haunting music played by Bela Lugosi’s Ygor and finally, Boris Karloff’s monster.
Add a commentBook Review: Humanity in the shadow of brutality
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- Created: 12 May 2017 12 May 2017
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The Cultural Revolution was a particularly brutal period in Chinese history. In 1966, Chairman Mao unleashed a torrent of violence and ignorance that aimed to purge the country of revisionists, the bourgeois, the traditional and the capitalist.
Add a commentWest Dulwich Pizza: Cellar 107 Wood oven pizza
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- Created: 09 May 2017 09 May 2017
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Having lived in West Dulwich for the last 3 years, I have become aware that is a bit of a desert when it comes to dining out locally. While other places like Herne Hill seem to have an ever growing choice of eateries and drinkeries, West Dulwich has Cafe Rouge and the god awful pub-come-wedding venue, the Rosendale.
Add a commentMargo as friend and grandmother (Part 2)
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- Created: 05 May 2017 05 May 2017
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Yesterday would have been Margo Durrell's birthday. There was always a little bit of confusion about her age because she used to chisel off a year here and there. She died in 2007 at an agreed age of 87. So to commemorate her 97th birthday I have written this short piece. Add a comment
Some notes on David Hockney exhibition at Tate Britain
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- Created: 02 May 2017 02 May 2017
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Ever since art school I have found the most famous works of Hockney, such as the Hollywood portraits and interiors, very sterile, soulless, lacking any vital life element. He has an architects knack for precision, producing works that are void of spirit.
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South Circular Episode 2. Cares of the World
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- Created: 26 April 2017 26 April 2017
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After we published the first part of my South Circular ramble, from West Dulwich to Woolwich, we received a message from a reader in China (we have a reader in China!). He said he’d forwarded the link to a friend who had lived in Dulwich for forty years and the friend’s response was “should have turned left out of the station”.
Add a commentThe Durrells in Dulwich? (Part 1)
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- Created: 20 April 2017 20 April 2017
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I have recently received several links to press relating to the forthcoming series of ‘The Durrells’, the ITV adaptation of the books of Gerald Durrell. The success of the first series has guaranteed a second and, I am told, a third. Add a comment
Mangoes, farts & the facts of climate change
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- Created: 31 March 2017 31 March 2017
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You’re on a plane, heading off on holiday. You stand in line, holding a pair of two litre milk cartons, filled with aviation fuel. As the queue moves forward, you ready yourself, and when you get to the front you have one second to empty them and then race to the back of the line to refill. That’s the rate at which a 747 or Airbus gets through fuel. “I was amazed to hear that” nine year old Katla told me afterwards. Add a comment
Walking the South Circular. Episode 1
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- Created: 26 March 2017 26 March 2017
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There’s a cheerful patch of daffodils to provide a little relief from the dirty spray thrown up by cars and lorries. A cold, wet Wednesday morning, the fag end of rush hour; the perfect time to walk the South Circular, or at least a chunk of it. My starting point is West Dulwich station. I head east. At a bus stop, three bags of dog poo and a tennis ball prepare for a square dance or maybe a four-way stand off. There’s traffic noise rather than Ennio Morricone. Yards later, the beautiful Dulwich College hoves into site, wooded hill behind.
Add a commentVolcanic malvasia from Lanzarote
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- Created: 24 March 2017 24 March 2017
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Many Brits can last a winter up until about mid January before they start falling apart. The jet stream delivers warm currents to our south western shores that deceives us into believing that we are further south than we really are. Unfortunately, come February, the jet stream itself seems to have abandoned us, so like migratory birds many people flee the UK for sunnier climbs.
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