My sister and her husband have been visiting me for the weekend, and brought with them those Christmas presents that I couldn’t (and in one case, wouldn’t) carry home on the train. As a family, we don’t really “do” Christmas, mostly buying each other games, puzzles and other non-serious gifts. I was pleased to be […]
We don’t really “do” Christmas in our family. But we do make an effort to all get together sometime between Christmas and New Year at my parents’ house, to have a big family dinner and exchange stocking-filler presents. So I stopped off in Kent on my way back from Greece, and my sister and her […]
I’m not into purely decorative pottery; everything I make is designed to be functional. So there was no point putting my newly-fired tagine on a shelf and looking at it – I wanted to try it out. But I was very wary about using it for the first time. I have a friend who used […]
The bluebells are late this year – they are usually out in full bloom for the last week in April, but the appalling long cold winter has put them behind, like just about everything else. However, they have been well worth waiting for. I went for a walk on the Malvern Hills this afternoon, along […]
There are a couple of exhibitions on at the British Museum at the moment, which I particularly wanted to see. I don’t get down to London very often, so I decided to take advantage of staying at my parents’ on my return from Germany, and do both exhibitions in one day. Both “Ice Age Art, […]
Since Christopher and I had often thought about visiting “Roman Germany”, albeit without actually getting around to doing so, I thought it fitting to take some of his ashes with me to scatter somewhere appropriate. This is the spot I chose – into the Moselle River running through Trier, at the base of the original […]
I’ve always been interested in ancient history, and for several years now I’ve wanted to see some of the Roman ruins in Germany. However, it never managed to get to the top of Christopher’s and my “to visit” list. So, since I had a few days off over Easter, I decided to do a city-break […]
The Temple of the Moon was on one side of a valley. On the valley floor were the remains of houses of the original inhabitants, and on the other side was the Temple of the Sun. Despite its name, given to it by the Spanish, it’s probably not a temple at all but more likely […]
On my last day in Trujillo, I was taken to a magnificent site called Huaca de la Luna, or Pyramid of the Moon. This is a site built by the Moche people, so dates from the first to eighth centuries AD. The mountain was apparently sacred to them, so they built a temple right at […]
After visiting Chan Chan, I was taken to my hotel in Trujillo. It was a very comfortable hotel, just one block from the main square. I was shattered after a long day, and just wanted to collapse on my bed for an hour or so before dinner. But there was some renovation work going on […]
