Category: Uncategorized

Life audits and the grief of decluttering..

.Reading time 2 minutes.

“Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.” —Charles Dudley Warner Let’s take a moment to breathe here… much of the world has been whipped into a frenzy of clearing, donating, divesting. Charity shops are drowning in the deluge of discarded belongings. This is probably healthy, but should be done mindfully as well. […]

Read More

So, it seems we like railway stations….

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Railway stations …  we were developing a fascination for them, and they seemed to enter our orbit more and more. But who can resist the pulsing life of them, the throng of people going somewhere, with purpose, with luggage. “I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between […]

Read More

Montenegro

.Reading time 8 minutes.

We travelled south from Dubrovnik basically across the whole country of Montenegro, to Ulcinj, very near the southern border with Albania.   The bus took us around 6.5 hours and for the last 2 of them we were the only passengers left.   Montenegro is becoming a beach resort destination in Europe and have a myriad of […]

Read More

Corfu, in trouble

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Corfu..continued Corfu is, however, part of Greece and Greece is doing it hard. Whatever the reasons, infrastructure is struggling. Great stinking mountains of rubbish languish just out of eyeshot in towns. You will not see them on the main roads, but our little roadtrips encountered so many, hidden from view. Given that (to be graphic) […]

Read More

Idyllic Corfu (Pt 1)

.Reading time 7 minutes.

“Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.” ― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals I owed it to a lifetime love of Gerald Durrell’s novels, recollecting his childhood in Corfu, to visit.    I imagine what life would be like in the 1930s here, in some ways – out of […]

Read More

Lake Ohrid, Albania

.Reading time 3 minutes.

We arrived at our hotel, with Tomtom using the bookings.com co-ordinates to take us up a winding road completely in the wrong direction.  Eventually negotiated the dirt road past the construction/quarry and found our digs.  Which were lovely, absolute lakefront on the most beautiful lake.  Millions of years old, flanked by mountains, with a border […]

Read More

Honey, the guards need changing

.Reading time 3 minutes.

I am still somewhat scarred from the whole Copenhagen experience, so it is taking me a while to compile my postcard, so here is a vignette. We visited Amalienborg Palace, the home of the Danish Royal Family, where they reside in four identical (well they looked identical to me) homes facing a circular palazzo.  Cars, […]

Read More

A snapshot of childhood

.Reading time 3 minutes.

We watched the play whilst we ate lunch.  It ebbed and flowed, kids came and went in the way they do.  No voices were raised, no one was berated or pressured.  No parents hovered.    They just got on with the business of play

Read More