On good citizenship.

Yesterday, you went to the airport to see off Mother In Law after her epic three month visit.
So there you are, sitting in the cafe having a last cup of tea before sending her off to brave the security gauntlet, when you notice that there’s a number of cabin crew types drinking coffee there too.
You were idly pondering over this – [...]

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On your holiday.

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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On Sergiyev Posad.

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 Rochester.

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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On being beside the seaside.

  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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On what they hate about us.

Once upon a time you asked a Russian if he’d enjoyed his recent business trip to Great Britain.
“Yes,” he said, “London was great. But,” he added, a look of slightly shocked disgust sliding over his face, “the British really drink far too much.”
This isn’t an isolated opinion either but pretty much the the first comment on the [...]

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On script theory.

So with any luck the Western world is now universally asking itself what the deal is with you and Roald Dahl. Drat, that was supposed to be a question. OK, let’s rephrase… So what is the deal with you and Roald Dahl?
You have this annoying habit of dropping the phrase ‘I hate travelling’ into the [...]

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