It was the spring of 1944; one could discern the season as one glimpsed the young leaves hesitantly peeping out from the trees that lined the tramway along the Bristol Road. Beyond that, Birmingham remained its proud but grimy old self, much as Victorian industry had left it, licking its wounds now from the Blitz…
One man’s rubbish…
Oslo residents Elisabet Helsing & Graham Dukes have a rubbish day out You remember the dear old dustbin? Back in the forties all our good parents had one, just out of sight beyond the kitchen window. It was mostly filled with the greyish powder left after a good blaze in the kitchen grate, but anything…
Friends reunited
My elder sister died last summer. Were she still alive I don’t think she would be too surprised to hear me describe one aspect of her character as that of an inveterate collector and hoarder, with strong magpie tendencies. Accordingly, her flat was filled with treasures. These have now been sorted and two particular treasures…
Strictly Heaven
Once tea was poured and pleasantries were over, talking began. I was round at Martha’s and on that particular morning our discussion naturally turned to the previous night’s final of Strictly Come Dancing and to its winner, the drummer Harry Judd. ‘Strictly’ is not everyone’s favourite programme but Martha and I are devotees and in…
Reverting to type
Elizabet Helsing and husband Graham Dukes appear to be typing a letter.. It was several decades ago that we first ran into the concept of processing. At that time it was applied to cheese; processed cheese looked like soap and tasted much the same. Later on they processed foods in general, textiles and goodness knows…
Marching on
The protest march last Saturday was my umpteenth. There was chanting, banner waving and ululation as my wife and I walked slowly through the centre of London from Temple, along the Embankment and up to the Treasury where we stopped for the speeches. We were protesting about the excessive burden borne by women in the…
Aladdin’s cave
For visitors to London a traditional, albeit quirky, tourist attraction is the food hall at Harrods. In Moscow the equivalent would be the vaulted galleries at GUM; in Paris, perhaps the magnificent glass and steel dome at Galleries Lafayette. At the other extreme and again in Paris, there is the basement of BHV, formally known…
Trials and tribulations
We were invited to attend the public ‘defence’ of a PhD thesis one afternoon in Paris. Unlike in the UK, in France and indeed in most other mainland European countries, universities hold the oral component of the PhD exam (the ‘viva’) in public. With preliminary assessments by the examiners, coupled with careful oversight by the…