Christmas Day

“The bearer, white-turbaned and bare-footed, pulls back the curtains to let in a blaze of sun. Outside the fountains are playing, the birds are shrieking. Cascades of stocks, carnations and petunias hang over the edges of ornamental pools.

A Long View

This sceptred isle has seen some changes that must have been bewildering at the time. But let’s digress before we even begin.

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Categorised as Business

We Three Trees of Orient Are

Parrotia persica (commonly called Persian ironwood) is a deciduous tree in the family Hamamelidaceae, closely related to the witch-hazel genus Hamamelis. It is native to northern Iran and southern Azerbaijan (where it is called Dəmirağac) and it is endemic in the Alborz mountains. (Wiki) It was Urban Tree of the Year in 2014.

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Categorised as Environment

Local News

Two years ago the NHS Trust that runs Charing Cross Hospital put forward a plan to re-build it. Work was intended to start this year and be completed by 2021.

A Degastation

Off to Cambridge and Degas feeling sick and giddy. I have doubled my dose of Losartan to 50 mg and now my blood pressure is so low I can barely function. Degas was a multi-tasker as the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam demonstrates.

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Categorised as Art

Studios

  If you drive over the Hammersmith flyover you are sure to to have noticed this parade of artists’ studios by Barons Court station.

Munro Bagging

I wonder why there are so many sculptures depicting humans and animals or fish? Does the chap paying wrestle with the problem of which to have and then think – I know, I’ll have ’em both?

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Categorised as Sculpture

Popgood & Groolley

Since I was made redundant two and half years ago I have taken on a few honorary jobs. Hitherto I have not mentioned them but as the latest has been made public I want to keep you in the picture.

Two Fine Lutyens Memorials

There are twenty Grade I listed war memorials in England (out of over 3,000 listed war memorials) including the Arch of Remembrance in Leicester designed by Lutyens, his largest war memorial in England. I have not seen it but on Friday I visited another of his memorials, also Grade I listed.