Herts and Sole

In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen. This month in the SE of England it’s an Indian summer and yesterday Bertie and I went to Hertfordshire.

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Archipelagic Void

South Korean architect, Minsuk Cho, has created Archipelagic Void outside The Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. I went to see it yesterday.

Garden News

Like Frank Sinatra, regrets, I have a few and one was ordering Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Varigatum’ in January last year.

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Winter

I have read a lot of first hand accounts, not exhaustively, of European history 1918 – 1990.

Atishoo!

I read The Lord of The Rings and associated Mordor’s black volcanic plain with Morden at the end of the black Northern Line – somewhere to be avoided, at least by me as I am not a brave Hobbit.

Big Shot

My grandfather expressed consternation when I got a job in the City after university. I remember him shaking his head, saying he’d always thought I should go into the church and have a parish in the West of Ireland with some good fishing and snipe bogs … perhaps woodcock, he added hopefully.

Good Shot

There were pigs at Barmeath, before my time, but I remember the sties. In the autumn they lived in the woods eating beech mast and the like.

Fish and Ships

It is rare to see potted shrimps on a restaurant menu but the sort of clubs I go to invariably have them on their menus. I mean the sort of clubs where one eats in the coffee room, although sometimes it’s the only room where coffee isn’t served.

Castles & Walled Gardens

Government backed “levelling up” has mixed results. That’s my way of saying taxpayers’ money is usually spent as ineffectively in this area as it is for overseas aid.