Every year it astonishes me, the morning after the excesses of the Pudding Club, just how much we all manage to put away at breakfast the next morning. We met up in the dining room at 09:00 and breakfasted extremely well on a full English, plus cereal, toast, fruit, yoghurt, and in the case of […]
Of course, the Retail Therapy was only a side-show to the main event of the weekend, our annual trip to the Pudding Club. We made the short drive over the Cotswolds to the picturesque village of Mickleton, to the Three Ways House hotel. I always rate a hotel by whether it provides flannels, a box […]
The year has gone by so quickly that last weekend was time once again for my now-annual gluttonous girls’ weekend away at the Pudding Club with a group of friends who are all loosely associated with work. Val, who organises it, has been going for 17 years so has the schedule tightly tied down so […]
It’s been ages since I’ve been to Eastnor Pottery. I don’t quite know why that is – mostly I think I just got out of the habit of making sure I had a future session booked into my diary, and they were so busy last year that I couldn’t just book a slot at short notice. […]
I’ve been on another of my Archaeological Study Days with Andante Travels. This time it was behind the scenes at the British Museum, learning about the Mayan civilisation of the Yucatan peninsular, straddling today’s Mexico, Belize and Guatamala. It’s a civilisation I’ve been interested in ever since Christopher and I honeymooned in Mexico over 20 years […]
It’s been a while since I’ve been to the theatre, and I certainly don’t intend to go there over the Christmas season, when all that’ll be on is The Panto. Not my cup of tea at all. The actors for that are already in town, and the principals (some minor stars from children’s TV) turned […]
I had something of a dilemma at the weekend. On the one hand, I’ve got a heavy cold that I just can’t shake, and was feeling really grotty, so I wanted to have a really quiet weekend and snuffle my way through it with strepsils, mugs of honey&lemon, and boxes of extra-soft tissues. On the […]
Before I left for the Isle of Wight, my father sent me a cutting from his history magazine which he knew I’d find interesting. I hadn’t even heard of Brading Roman Villa before, but I looked it up and it was an easily-manageable day trip from where I was staying. I got a bus from […]
The conference was very interesting, but extremely hard work. So I was very pleased that I’d had the foresight to book the following week off work on leave. The parents of a good friend of mine from university own a seaside holiday home which they let out commercially during the school holidays. But in low […]
The conference had some very long days – on the Monday, I was in conference sessions from 08:30 right through to 19:00, with only a short break for lunch. I joined some other delegates and we took a table for lunch at a very nice little French bistro directly opposite the conference centre. The fixed-price […]
