Posted in Aberystwyth, Architecture, Bridgenorth, Britain, Castles, Churches, Floods, Ludlow, Nature, Shropshire, Sightseeing, Travel, Wales, the Countryside, the Severn Valley Railway on September 20, 2007 | 10 Comments »
So you and B went on holiday.
You haven’t the energy for much description right now - in the last two weeks you have spent five days locked in a room with thirty three 8 year olds who have been fed a bowl of sugar for breakfast each and 30 minutes writing down the story of Britain from [...]
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Posted in Architecture, Britain, Chelsea, Culture, Food, Music, Nodnol, Sightseeing, The Proms, the Royal Albert Hall on July 30, 2007 | 4 Comments »
So there you and B are, sitting on a bench eating grapes and a pork pie, admiring the view of large tombstones which populate the square you are in, and basking in the unexpected sunshine.
Suddenly you become aware that the young lady next to you has not only come prepared with cutlery and a china plate [...]
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Going for a ramble round Kew Botanical Gardens last weekend brought your maternal Grandma powerfully to mind.
Now everybody in your family likes gardening and gardens and so she was by no means the only family member you have done gardens with. Although your paternal Granny’s agoraphobia tended to make this a trip to [...]
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Posted in Architecture, Books, Britain, Culture Shock, Drink, Music, Public Transport, Russia, Sergei Lukyanenko, Sightseeing, The Rest of the World on April 23, 2007 | 7 Comments »
Having discovered that you had slightly misinterpreted the setting of the book by a Spanish author - with large chunks of it set in Spain simply because Spain is the centre of the universe, as opposed to somewhere suitably Continentally decedent for odd Art to take place - it got you thinking about the other series [...]
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Sergiyev Posad is one of the Golden Ring towns. That is, it’s one of twelve towns floating around Moscow which are historically significant and are recommended as worth a visit if to anyone who is going to be in the region for any length of time.
You’ve actually been to two. The other one was Suzdal.
But you tended to [...]
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On your return from Margate you stopped off in Rochester. Which turned out to be a very literary visit.
Ever since you had sailed through it on your way to the seaside, the name had been rolling around in your head and bugging you. You couldn’t remember why the place was so familiar when the sight of [...]
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You have always considered that Turner’s paintings of the sea are often a bit on the beige side.
You are aware, of course, that water is not necessarily blue in the same way that holiday brochures of Caribbean islands, children’s paintings and remote mountain tarns would have us believe. Nevertheless, you always assumed that the correct [...]
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The first time you went to Windsor Castle was with a bunch of foreign teenagers you were shepherding about as part of your job on an EFL summer school.
Your most abiding memory was of reeling out of the ticket office in shock at the amount of money you had just forked over for your group [...]
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The last time you went to the actual Bolshoi happened to be for an opera:
You don’t go to the Bolshoi for the performances. Well, I know you don’t. You opera/ballet appreciation skills are about as well developed as your ability to speak Russian.
But what I mean, with all apologies to the artists involved, is [...]
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Your thing for Russian composers predates and actually has nothing to do with the fact that you ended up spending seven years in Russia, so every now and again you fail miserably to connect Russian composers with their country of origin. Which is why, when you were back in the USSR at a time when the world - well, [...]
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