I went back to Eastnor Pottery again today to do some throwing. I didn’t want to make anything in particular – I’ve got plenty of plates, bowls and mugs already, but I did want to have a play at throwing different vase shapes. When I was in Greece over Christmas, I visited several museums with […]
One of the things I enjoy about walking round cities built on ancient foundations, is that you can turn a corner and find yourself face-to-face with 2000 year old remains, just sitting there in the middle of the street! That was certainly the case with Thessaloniki. There was a large Roman forum, still right in […]
The absolute highlight of the trip for me (as I think for most people, unless they had a frankly unhealthy obsession with early Byzantine basilicas) was the museum at Vergina, displaying the contents of the Macedonian royal tombs. These had been the subject of a superb exhibition at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford in 2011. […]
On Christmas Day, all of the museums and most of the sites were closed – the drawback of going on holiday over Christmas in a Christian country! The group went for a long and rather tiring walk around Thessaloniki – we visited a few historically interesting very early Byzantine churches in the morning, nipping into […]
I find Christmas a very difficult time of the year, and I really don’t want to spend Christmas Day moping about the house on my own. So I was determined to go away again this year. I was feeling a bit less anti-social than I have for the past two years, so decided to join […]
This week I went from one end of the Malvern pub-grub scale to the other. The pubs for my recent meals with my friends were chosen to have good food, and an atmosphere conducive to a good chat over a few drinks. In contrast, on Wednesday it was the work Christmas Lunch, for the whole […]
I’ve been doing a fair amount of catching-up recently with friends, mostly ex-colleagues, over a meal, which has been very enjoyable. First, I met up with a group I used to work with a number of years ago, who have all left the company to join a spin-out which they set up on the science […]
It’s been a busy weekend. I met up with an ex-colleague of Christopher’s for lunch yesterday. He left the company around the same time that Chris did, and moved away from Malvern, so we only get to meet up about once a year. We went to lunch at the pub at the top of the […]
Over the years, I’ve probably seen most of Shakespeare’s comedies, and a good few of his tragedies, but very, very few of the History Plays. In fact, the only one I can remember seeing is Anthony and Cleopatra many years ago with Vanessa Redgrave (I think) as Cleopatra. What I do remember very clearly is […]
Last week, Malvern Theatres was showing a new play, The Duck House, starring Ben Miller, prior to it transferring to the West End. I wasn’t originally planning on going to see it – it’s a farce, and I don’t normally bother with those. Christopher really wasn’t at all keen on farces, finding them very silly, […]
