Osberto Parsley

It seems to me it’s unusual to have a surname that is a vegetable or herb. The Broccoli dynasty of Bond fame, of course, and the fictional Parsnip created by Evelyn Waugh to mock WH Auden in Put Out More Flags. So I’m pleased to add Parsley to my trug.

A Jaunt To See Jenner

Guest blogger, Robert Bruce, went on an apposite walk on Sunday. “Yesterday, in need of exercise on a bright Spring day, I walked down to the Italian Gardens at the north side of Kensington Gardens. I made sure that I was socially distancing all the way. Though this was relatively easy. Not many people about.… Continue reading A Jaunt To See Jenner

Going West

We drove to the Forest of Dean on a wet Tuesday. I am getting to know the green car better. Sometimes it is breathtakingly brainy, at other times exasperating; in fact just like Bertie.

Mo Farquharson

Mo Farquharson is a sculptor of considerable ability who sadly died last year aged only sixty-four. The Miners commemorates seventy-three colliers who died in the Udston Colliery explosion in 1887.

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Categorised as Sculpture

Taranto

This wall in Margravine Cemetery is engraved with some 120 names of those who died serving in the two World Wars and are buried here.

Chiswick House

Just two miles upstream is an architectural gem: Chiswick House. It got a big thumbs up some three years ago in Upstream. Now it’s back on our radar because it is set in 65 acres of gardens.

Saint Leodegar

The St Leger has been run on Town Moor outside Doncaster since 1776, or thereabouts. It’s the oldest of the Classics run over a mile, six furlongs and 132 yards in September.

Big Cheese

I’m sorry, I’ll write that again – big trees. This is a Maclura Pomifera named after William Maclure, an American geologist born in Scotland. The Pomifera means fruit-bearing. It should be named after William Dunbar, another Scotsman, who identified it in 1804 when he was travelling from the Mississippi River to the Ouachita River.

The Feildings

This portrait by van Dyck hangs in the National Gallery in London. It depicts William, 1st Earl of Denbigh (c 1587 – 1643). He had been to India in the early 1630s and is seen, looking florid,  in Indian dress with a servant helpfully pointing out a parrot for him to bag.