In a recent post, More Jottings, I mentioned joining the National Churches Trust. It turns out to be rather a bargain. The minimum subscription is £30 and when you join you receive this 192 page hardback coffee table filler that sells for £20.
When I drove more my motorway cruising speed was at least 85 mph so I had to keep an eye open for jam sandwiches as they were called. (Police cars were white with a red stripe.)
When I arrived in Carmarthenshire on Sunday the house was called Llwyn Piod (that’s Welsh for Magpie Grove). Yesterday the council and Royal Mail gave their consent for it to be called Fox Hall so change your Address Book.
I hung around SE Asia in 1989, based in Singapore. Inspired by one of the funniest travel books I have ever read, Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O’Hanlon, I spent a long weekend in Sarawak. It was published only six years previously, in 1983, so not much had changed.
Today’s post is an homage to Robert O’Byrne, The Irish Aesthete. I had the pleasure of meeting Robert in Ireland last weekend; my sister asked him to a merry dinner.
Bath featured here a few days ago. I went to see the Bruegel/Brueghel exhibition at the Holburne Museum. You might think I went to Cherbourg from the picture above.
Many years ago, after a walk in the Cotswolds with Sandy Murray, we stopped at Swinbrook to look at the church where Nancy and Unity Mitford are buried and there are these magnificent reclining ancestors. There are two triple-deckers so it is worth the detour.
A letter in The Times suggests that the name of the president-elect of France could be derived from MacRonald, “one of the wild geese Irishmen who migrated to France after the battle of the Boyne”. What nonsense.
At the end of March 2012, I went with my cousin to St Paul’s Cathedral for a service to mark the centenary of Scott’s doomed expedition to the South Pole. My cousin is of an adventurous disposition and had been in Antarctica, qualifying him for two tickets to the service.