It comes as no surprise, to me at least, that during recent trips to Paris there were moments when staircases dominated my thoughts; on one visit the staircase was threatening, on the other it was seductive. Architecture has always fascinated me, indeed, in my early teens it was my dream career and, while there is…
A great escape
In a few days, on the 14 June to be precise, around two thousand men dressed up as soldiers will gather in Naseby, in the heart of England. There, they will form up as two opposing armies and do battle. It will be a festival of make-believe in which these soldiers re-enact a key battle…
She’s leaving home
After almost three hours' work we stood in a row on the quayside waving her off. It was an emotional moment - at least for me. There was nobody on board the good ship Ann, no one to whom we were saying goodbye and no one to miss. It was just Ann herself and, anyway,…
Parking mad
Driving a car is full of challenges and on this particular occasion Janine, who is in her sixties, was at the wheel. Her driving is typically calm and careful; she is certainly not a risk-taker. The driver in front suddenly applied his brakes, and in seconds Janine's demeanour changed. She lowered her window, stared…
A fleeting moment
Thanks to the enduring suspension of our host's old Mercedes, our descent of the winding drive to the riverside clearing couldn't have been smoother. Phyllis, who collected us from the station, had invited us to spend a night at her family's water mill. The once-dilapidated seventeenth-century mill had been restored by her father Bastiaan and he had also…
As you like it
Yes, it all started seventy years ago. I was fourteen years old, growing up as a faithful disciple of William Shakespeare. I had declaimed his noble words on the stage, I had stepped reverentially through his birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. And then one day, browsing in a seaside bookshop... Walter Ellis’s little book The Shakespeare Myth…
Time traveller
The other day my mind played a trick on me. While fully conscious, I suddenly saw myself standing staring at a poster on a wall in a Paris street in 1944. The experience was most odd and, because of the poster, very moving. The feeling was quite different from the experience I get when my…
Friends reunited
It is a simple truth that relationships change with age. For my part, over the years I have become closer both to other human beings and to some of my possessions. In this particular story, the possession was a bone china mug. It all started when I went downstairs to make an early-morning cup of…