Today I am talking conkers. Yeah, yeah. I know. I’ve been talking conkers for years. Funny. But, seriously, I’m worried. Because things have changed at Strawberry How this autumn. And, for once, it’s nothing to do with Strawberry Swamp. It was only a couple of weeks ago I remarked to the Gremlin, whilst taking a stroll round our front…
Month: October 2016
No newts is bad news… and other thongs… er, things
Campaign groups, I learned last week, have taken to planting colonies of great crested newts (Triturus cristatus) on proposed development sites, in a bid to scupper the likes of Story Homes and Persimmon. The diminutive newt, you see, has ‘the power to halt bulldozers in their muddy tracks’. Or so said Conservative peer Lord Borwick…
Artsy fartsy at large
When Samuel Johnson observed (to his friend and biographer James Boswell), that when ‘a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford’, he’d clearly never hurtled northwards, after four whistle stop days in the capital, thanking the Lord and Virgin trains to be heading…
Big shiny medals and bags of cash
Thanks to having been privileged to represent mountain rescue on a number of occasions, I’ve met some pretty amazing people, been invited to things I’d never have been invited to otherwise, in places I might never have seen. I’ve eaten dinner on the Cutty Sark, nibbled cucumber sandwiches at Buckingham Palace, quaffed champagne in the…
Hackette on the How 