Moonkelet March 11, 2008

In praise of… our armed forces October 24, 2007

I don’t know if you heard, but there is a campaign this week which is encouraging us to show our appreciation for all the hard work that our armed forces have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are being asked by one of the campaign organisers to create a logo for a t-shirt, anything [...]

Under the Copper Beech August 30, 2007

I approach the garden with a certain amount of trepidation. The grass, which is usually trim, hasn’t been cut in a while. At the bottom of the garden there is a copper beech tree whose branches droop almost as far as the ground, creating a secluded canopied area underneath. 
“Through there”, she says pointing to the [...]

Wimbledon, rain and other interruptions July 9, 2007

I am watching a Wimbledon tennis match on television, grateful that for once the rain has stayed away, when she walks in, her usual energetic self, an English jumping bean caught in a hurricane, and, as usual, still buzzing from quotidian office events. She is one of the few people I’ve ever come across who appears [...]

Flight of the Bumblebee May 25, 2007

The van cabin is overrun with insects. The yellow Dayglo jacket I wear while working on my cameras attracts all sorts of bugs, who seem to think they’ve discovered a giant flower. Bees, wasps, daddy-long-legs, arachnids and assorted minor bugs cling to the jacket, and when I go back inside the van, they come with [...]

Soliloquy April 22, 2007

To blog or not to blog, that is the question.
Whether ‘t is nobler in the mind, to suffer
The sticks and stones of caustic comment;
Or to take arms against a sea of trolls,
And with cutting wit, kill them? – To delete the blog, -to fall silent,
No more; -and, by deleting, to say we end
The manic monitoring [...]

Chavs R Us April 2, 2007

From the perspective of a newly-arrived foreign observer, Britain must seem an impenetrable and baffling array of unspoken rules and traditions. From a distance, the archetypal British male still wears a tweed jacket and sips his tea with his pinkie firmly erect. American films and TV programs even now, whenever called upon to include a British character [...]