Friday December 12th, 2025
One of the few days without rain. Continuing mild and some watery winter
sun. Much tidying and hands and knees
stuff in the garden to be done. The
boredom only alleviated by listening to the music stream of the new 50th
Anniversary edition of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ album. An extended release with many outtakes. Most intriguing is the mournful solo by the
violinist Stephane
Grappelly* on a never before released version of the ‘Wish You Were Here’
track.
* Wikipedia has Stéphane
Grappelli, which is probably accurate, but on all my vinyl discs (mostly
including Django Reinhardt) dating back many years the anglicized version above
is given.
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| Early December, 2025 |
New Year
The Isle of Wight, tranquil and a calm sea on January 2nd.
Monday January 12th, 2026
Christmas negotiated though I had Covid starting a few days
before it. Shortish illness and rapid
disappearance of that dreaded second red line on the test strip. Despite the naysaying of RFK Jr, I do believe
the vaccinations may have had something to do with the rapid clearing and no
sequelae.
More to write I’m sure, but I wanted to record my experience
of yesterday, driving from a friend’s house in East Somerset to Winscombe which
is in the west of the county, and not far from Weston Super Mare. In high wind, cloud, and driving rain along
the spine of the Mendip Hills, passing signs for mysterious places such as
Gurney Slade and Chewton Mendip.
Visiting friends in an internally restored 14th Century
farmhouse, and then on via a deserted Wells to another friend in the tiny
hamlet of Hadspen. It is surely unusual
to take a photograph of Wells Cathedral with no one in sight…
The sign for Gurney Slade reminds me of a strange time in my
childhood…
I attended – for two years only – the grammar school in
Haverfordwest. Not my favourite memory. Run on Victorian lines, it occupied ancient
buildings at the top of the town, a long walk uphill from the bus station. Boarding the bus in Trecwn, an Admiralty
armament depot in the middle of nowhere, there was a miscellany of
passengers. I remember the adult girls
in their 1950s outfits and beehive hair, sometimes even in curlers with plastic
covers to keep the rain off. All
travelling to Haverfordwest to work as shop assistants or in secretarial
jobs. There was a mixture of Welsh boys,
also heading for the market town where most of the employment was. The more outré among them sporting Teddy Boy
haircuts, the ‘D.A.’ and drainpipe trousers.
It was a long journey, even after joining the winding A40, and the bus
was often stopped for quarter of an hour awaiting the blasting in Treffgarne*
quarries, while the road was closed to traffic.
In the inevitable Welsh rain, one arrived after the 15-minute walk
uphill sodden and had to sit shivering in class until clothes dried.
* Treffgarne is Welsh for ‘Town of the Rock’.
During my second year, we moved back to Fishguard and made
the acquaintance of one of the sixth formers, a near neighbour, called Anthony
Slade. The bizarre TV comedy, ‘The
Strange World of Gurney Slade’, a BBC indulgence of the singer Anthony Newley,
resulted in Anthony being renamed ‘Gurney’.
Gurney was 17 and had a driving licence.
Even more remarkable, he owned a ‘bubble car’, probably the most famous
of that ilk, the BMW Isetta. This
microscopic vehicle, now worth around £32,000, had a front opening hatch, and
the steering wheel and dashboard opened to allow 2 people to cram inside. Quite how my parents allowed me to accompany
Gurney to Haverfordwest G.S. I have no idea.
The A40 in 1960-61 was not particularly safe for a tiny three-wheeler. Nonetheless, I survived. The obliging Gurney also kindly introduced me
to cigarettes. It was with some relief
that my parents moved to Bath, where I attended a kinder if somewhat
eccentrically run school, where only the most reprobate of pupils smoked. I say ‘eccentrically’, because of course,
with 20-20 hindsight we can appreciate the sometimes-odd characteristics of the
staff, though at the time, just like any other school pupil, it passed for
normal.
More January news:
A sign of the extraordinary self-preoccupation of
Hollywood. It is Golden Globes time in the
city of Sodom, California. A sleekly
clad Barbie (who research tells me was probably Nikki Glaser) announces, with
unabashed sincerity, ‘The most important thing happening in the world right now
is the Golden Globes.’ Really? What about peaceful protesters being shot in
cold blood in cities in Iran? What about
Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, Venezuela? But as
William Sitwell has written in the Daily Telegraph, ‘When Meghan can make £27
million selling jam you know society is broken.’ I rest my case.
I recently posted a picture of my wife with Antoine Semenyo, the footballer, who has now joined Manchester City for a very substantial sum. In a new reworking of a very old joke, I posited that in this photo of the happy couple, one was worth many millions of pounds, and the other was Antoine Semenyo.
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| Lindsay with Antoine |
As part of my early January travels, I visited a friend in
Buckinghamshire. On the way I paid a
long overdue visit to Bletchley Park, just to the south of Milton Keynes. Bletchley, a then remote spot outside London,
became the headquarters of the GC&CS (Government Code and Cypher School,
now better known as GCHQ) in the 1930s when it was appreciated that war with
Germany was inevitable. The original
GC&CS in WWI was the famous ‘Room 40’ and was situated in Whitehall. The increased radio traffic and complexity of
code breaking led to a steady increase in personnel during WWII. It increased from about 200 in 1939 to nearly
10,000 by the end of the war. Multiple
huts were built to accommodate the staff, many of which are still standing, and
recreated as nearly as possible to their wartime appearance, even to the old
telephones and the cardigans hanging on the backs of the chairs.
Many language experts, university dons, mathematicians, and even
chess and crossword champions were enlisted to help with codebreaking. The most famous, of course, was Alan Turing,
but others made huge contributions to the machines which were in effect the
first computers.
The breaking of the Enigma code, and the Lorenz code, is
thought to have reduced the duration of the war by up to two years. In the process, the famous ‘Bombe’ machines
and the computer ‘Colossus’ were designed and built.
In Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, the treacherous Earls
Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey are confronted by the King in Southampton, before
the departure for France. The Earls of
Westmoreland and Exeter whisper to one another before the entry of the King and
the traitors. An apposite quotation sits
on the panelling of the entrance hall of the old manor house in Bletchley Park.
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| The words of Westmoreland and Exeter |
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| Statue of Alan Turing, Bletchley Park |
Lenzerheide. 17th
to 24th January 2026.
Après ski. In my
case, the après ski is only too literal.
After more than 50 years, I have relinquished skiing. The snow is shrinking, and the slopes are
crowded with undesirables – a generalisation I know, but if you had seen the
scruffy, snotty youths waiting for the Sportbus in Lenzerheide the other day,
clutching their half-finished cans of Red Bull and vapes, you might feel the
same. Even my friend Marina, a local,
winner of many ski races in her youth, was nearly wiped out by an out-of-control
skier the other day. We took to the
walking paths, around into the Obervaz valley, above the Albula river, and away
from the noise of the slopes, and walked in tranquillity and beauty.
On our last day of walking, we hiked to the smaller satellite village of Lenz (Lantsch in Romansch). Here is a picture of its ski slope (1300m altitude).
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| Lenz. January 23rd, 2026 |
The villagers have recently had a briefing meeting on how to sustain the Lenzerheide economy when the snow vanishes. Already famous for mountain biking world championships, the town will have to adapt somehow.
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| A distant view of the Rigi, by Lake Lucerne, taken from above Lake Zurich. The Rigi was famously painted by Turner in watercolour. |
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| Lenzerheide, January 2026 |
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| A View of the Lenzerhorn during my birthday lunch at the Tgantieni Hotel |
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| Lenzerheide and Valbella are home to some quirky sculptures |
With few hotels (though many apartments), perhaps it could
rival its near neighbour, Davos, in holding some important world event? The tentacles of the WEF (World Economic
Forum) spread this far anyway, many locals hosted delegates to the WEF on Air
BnB during the week we were there. There
are regular buses and trains to Davos.
Davos also came to my attention during my visit at the house
of a friend in Zürich. Her friend’s
father wrote and illustrated the definitive book on Thomas Mann (1875-1955). A presentation copy was on her
bookshelf. Mann was born in Lübeck
(Germany), but after various wanderings, lived a few streets away from my
friend, in Küsnacht,
on Lake Zürich. Although a Lutheran, his opposition to Nazism
meant that he left Germany in 1933. His
wife, Katia, came from a secular Jewish family, and it was her treatment in the
famous Davos sanatorium for (misdiagnosed) tuberculosis which gave Mann the
inspiration for his most famous novel, The Magic Mountain (Die Zauberberg, 1924),
in which the hospital becomes a microcosm for Germany and Europe in the years
after WW1.
I read this novel as a medical student, though a further
re-reading many years later suggests that either I skim-read its 750 pages, or
perhaps just focussed on the medical aspects of the novel. I found the detailed description of the
medical assessment after the hero (anti-hero?) Hans Castorp, is admitted to the
sanatorium, fascinating. There is the
insatiable and introspective delight the inmates take in discussing their fever
or lack of it. One review of the novel
however points out that the description of taking one’s body temperature goes
on for 26 pages. Trying to re-read it in
my late fifties I found it impossible. I
cannot remember who it was who said, ‘It’s okay not to finish a book; put it
down and forget it.’ I have never been
very good at following that advice, but as one gets older it is probably an
imperative.
This digression (forgive me) is taking over. If one asks Google (AI) about the novel, and
whether it is unreadable, one finds the following:
“Die Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) by Thomas
Mann is generally not considered "unreadable," but it is widely
regarded as a highly challenging, slow-paced, and dense intellectual
masterpiece. It is a quintessential Bildungsroman and
"time-novel" that demands patience, often described as a rewarding
experience for those who commit to its length and depth”.
Well, AI has put me in my place. I have some sympathy with ‘Gonzo’, a reviewer
on Amazon books, who stated:
“It's like Proust divested of any beauty or profundity.
I get the feeling he read the first volume of 'A la recherche du temps perdu'
and said to himself, "I can do that".
But he has nothing to say. And if at times he thinks he might, then he usually
checks himself.
Mann is not an artist, he is just a writer.
Read something else, because in the case of 'Der Zauberberg', lost time is not
found again”.
My interest was further stimulated because our close friends
in Lenzerheide, Marina and Claudio Bergamin, must be related to the world
expert on Thomas Mann in Davos, Herr Klaus Bergamin. In particular, he lectures on the history of
the Schatzalp Hotel, which was one of the original sanatoria (TB bacilli an
optional extra). *
* A joke. I don’t
want to be sued by the hotel management.
Its website is full of fascinating facts – for example, Kaiser Wilhelm
II never visited but reserved all three Imperial rooms continuously for 10
years in case any members of his family contracted tuberculosis.
Without a trace of irony, the hotel website states:
“At Schatzalp, guests have always enjoyed preferential
treatment: emperors, princesses, famous people with well-sounding names… and
you. Genuine hospitality means that everyone should feel like royalty in our
house. The unobtrusively attentive staff of our house ensures here, at an
altitude of 1865 metres, an unforgettable stay, from first “Welcome” to the
final “Au revoir”. We have 92 hotel rooms, a chalet, the villa and an
apartment. Find all the details & prices here.”
I loved the ‘final “Au revoir”’!
It reminded me of Hotel California – “You can check out any
time you want, but you can never leave.”
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| Taken from the Schatzalp website |
A footnote: the earliest high-altitude treatment for TB
began in Görbersdorf
in the mountains of Silesia (now Poland) and the physician was a Dr Hermann
Brehmer (1854). Dr Alexander Spengler
(Davos) began his treatment independently in the 1860s. ‘Heliotherapy’ in Leysin began in 1903, and
Dr Edward Livingston Trudeau opened his sanatorium on the lake at Saranac Lake
(upstate New York) in 1884. Curiously, I
have lived and worked in Saranac Lake, though at a different hospital. Robert Louis Stevenson, among others, was an
inmate in Trudeau’s hospital. There was
some logic to the high altitude treatment: it was found that tubercle bacilli
thrived less well when deprived of oxygen.
This finding was also responsible for the devastating type of lung
surgery where the infected apex of the lung (TB was often lodged in the apex)
was collapsed deliberately. The upper
ribs on the affected side were also removed leaving a hideously distorted chest. I saw many patients who had undergone ‘thoracoplasty’,
as it was called, during my early years of medical practice. The arrival of streptomycin killed off not
only the bacilli, but the disfiguring surgery and the financial success of the high-altitude
clinics.
February 16th
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| Not only rain but high winds. A bedraggled and torn flag of Poole on our flagpole. 18th February. |
A long hiatus. What
can you say of day after day of rain?
‘And as I watch the drops of rain/Weave their weary paths
and die…’
Six Nations rugby has come round again. After a depressing defeat in heavy rain in
Rome, Scotland came back to their home territory of Murrayfield, and roundly
defeated England.
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| The Flower of Scotland. The earliest published version of the song by The Corries, and now Scotland's almost official national anthem. My annotations of my preferred key. |
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| I bought this book when it first came out. Now a collector's item. |
But I also watched France defeat Wales by 54 points to 12 at the Principality stadium in Cardiff. It was with a heavy heart. I learned to play rugby at the school in Haverfordwest, in an atmosphere so laden with rugby importance that I remember being given the afternoon off to watch an old boy of the school, M.S. Palmer, play scrum half for Oxford in the Varsity match on Tuesday December 6th, 1960. But socio-political factors are destroying rugby in Wales, and it is sad to see their decline:
‘C’est
magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre.
C’est de la folie.’ French
General Bosquet in 1855, observing the Charge of the Light Brigade.
So felt I watching Wales concede eight tries.
February 17th Shrove Tuesday
Our walking group convened at the Iron Age hillfort of
Badbury Rings. Despite this being a
modest upland area, the terrain was heavy and muddy. I would not ordinarily record details of our
walks save for one remarkable piece of farming trivia, vouchsafed to us by our
farming member. For reasons of discretion,
I will not name exact places or names.
Towards the end of this near 7-mile walk, when one or two of
us were feeling fatigued, we stopped by a giant puddle for a group
photograph. We were told that we were
standing in front of a famous field.
Unremarkable now, just a field of green.
Some years ago, when the government programme of ‘Set Aside’
was first announced, a local farmer, not the most enthusiastic worker, declared
his entire property ‘Set Aside’, put his feet up, and collected the money. This did not sit well with his farming friends. But this field began to grow the most
remarkable acreage of poppies. So dense
and so spectacular was this display that when the makers of ‘Blackadder Goes
Forth’ were searching for their final scene after our heroes go ‘over the top’,
they were directed to this farm near Shapwick.
And there it is, as the final bombardment falls on Blackadder and his
comrades, the hell of the trenches is replaced by a tranquil vista of Dorset
poppies.
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| Walkers with puddle. Ex poppy field in the background. |
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| The field in 1989 |
Winter Olympics. Mercifully ending Sunday 22nd February
Chemmy Alcott (sitting in the ‘expert’ chair. 4-time Olympian, as we are reminded) –
‘monumental, massive, iconic’. I haven’t
heard so many iconics since the last Olympics.
We managed a silver in Men’s Curling, and our tea tray slider won 2 gold
medals.
1st March.
St David’s Day. We departed
Bournemouth airport for a package week in Fuerteventura. Intrigued to see the large number of
Bournemouth holidaymakers who feel it compulsory to order pints of overpriced lager
at seven o’clock in the morning, in order to ‘get into the holiday spirit’.
Fuerteventura, despite assertions, is probably not
translated as ‘Strong Winds’, though some would have it so. Nonetheless, with winds continuously at Force
5 to Force 9 during the week, the ‘feels like’ temperature remained in single
figures. A few beached whales were to be
seen on the more sheltered of hotel’s loungers, generally swathed in fleeces
and towels, and reading Richard Osman books.
We took the meteorological hint to spend most of our time hiking or
walking the beaches. There was also
plenty of time for reading. In order of
increasing size, I read ‘Leonard and Hungry Paul’, Hamnet, and ‘The Blind
Assassin’, the latter weighing in at 640 pages.
Hamnet is the novel of the moment, though I have left it
several years before reading it. The
film, recently made, is widely tipped to gain Oscars in Sodom, California. But I found it somewhat overblown,
overwritten, with much purple prose, and I find faction a difficult genre at
the best of times. Perhaps the finest current
exponent of the near-historical novel is Robert Harris. Of his novels, ‘An Officer and a Spy’, which
concerns the Dreyfus Case, gives a truer picture, with much more historical
fact than we find in Hamnet. In
fairness, of course, Shakespeare, his life and his family, is a much more fact-free
zone. Although I did not particularly
like ‘The Blind Assassin’, Margaret Atwood is a much finer writer. Her similes and metaphors carry no hint of
cliché. Example: Iris Griffen, the main protagonist, an
elderly and independently minded survivor with secrets to hide (as have all the
characters), has a housekeeper called Myra:
‘Myra had left me one of her special brownies, whipped up
for the Alumni Tea – a slab of putty, covered in chocolate sludge – and a
plastic screw-top jug of her very own battery-acid coffee. I could neither drink not eat, but why did
God make toilets? I left a few brown
crumbs, for authenticity’.
Although the book won the Booker Prize, I am not alone in
feeling reservations about it. The New
York Times critic, Thomas Mallon, called the book ‘overlong and badly
written’. I wouldn’t necessarily agree
with the second stricture, but the science fiction interludes which introduce
the concept of the blind assassin are tedious.
Which did I enjoy most?
Well, ‘Leonard and Hungry Paul’, by Ronan Hession. There were many laugh out loud moments. But there were poignancies and finely
characterised scenes of modern life. At
the risk of racial stereotyping, perhaps the facility for quirky observation is
a gift that the Irish have?
Before leaving the literature theme, here is a great
quotation from a curious book by Laurent Binet, about the ghastly Reinhard
Heydrich, and it pertains to faction.
This is what I wrote in my diary in 2021:
The author (Laurent Binet) expresses
his disgust of realistic novels. His
girlfriend finds a quotation from a French author’s life of Bach. ‘Has there ever been a biographer who did not
dream of writing, “Jesus of Nazareth used to lift his left eyebrow when he was
thinking”? ‘Yuk’! He says.
So much for ‘faction’.
Pace Maggie O’Farrell.
As all will be aware, our trip to Fuerteventura coincided
with the latest war that the Donald has started – started so that he can stop
it presumably. Nobel Committee please
take note. The news clips in the
Canaries were mostly about the Middle East.
During WWII the British characteristic phlegmatism was widely recognised
– perhaps the usual meme was the ‘Let’s put the kettle on and have a cup of
tea’. This spirit exists today. On arrival back home last Sunday (8th
March), we switched the TV on to be greeted with … Crufts! Yes, the doggy beauty and talent contest. Delighted to see that the supreme champion
was a spaniel who looked just like his owner.
Phlegm – yes, we own the world in this quality.
In case many of my readers think that this blog is absolutely
of no value at all, let me offer you some practical advice, and indeed a
recipe.
Walking back from the town of Corralejo along the beach to
our hotel, a not insignificant stroll of over a mile, we light on the ‘Sunset
Bar’ just behind the beach. A slightly
ramshackle establishment with some raffia or straw indicating its beachy
credentials, but the staff are friendly.
Lindsay and I order sangrias.
Although some bars (the better ones) produce a delightful cocktail of
fruits as garnish, including mango, pineapple, etc, this one, a little
disappointingly has only diced apple in with the ice cubes and the red concoction,
but it tastes divine. And when we rise
to stagger back along the beach, we become aware of its potency. Unusually, the bartender is happy to reveal
his recipe. ‘As well as red wine and
Sprite’, he says, ‘we add banana liqueur, triple sec, and brandy’. Wow.
You read it here first. Bananas
are grown in the Canary Islands, and the banana liqueur is local. But when I suggest buying a bottle in the airport
duty free Lindsay vetoes the idea.
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| Good wind in Fuerteventura |
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| Even better wind |
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| So we climbed the Calderon Hondo (without camel aid) |
St Patrick’s Day (a Tuesday).
We returned yesterday, a day early, from a somewhat abortive
holiday in the Forest of Bowland. We
have long wanted to explore this attractive area, much less well known than the
Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, and not that far from either of them. Our excuse for a trip in mid-March was that AFC
Bournemouth were playing Burnley FC, languishing at the bottom of the Premier
League. Surely a goal fest and an easy three points? But dying folk cling desperately to life, and
Burnley are in the same category. At
their ground, Turf Moor, where they have played since the 1880s, their
resistance and resilience were such that the result was a nil-nil draw. Bournemouth have a frustrating habit of not
converting their chances, and in the absence of Antoine Semenyo, their
penetration seems to have worsened. The
weather that Saturday afternoon was pleasant, but mad March came rollicking in
overnight and the weather on Sunday was awful.
Our first planned walk was an ascent of Pendle Hill, a giant whale of a
massif rising to nearly 1900 feet, to the south of Clitheroe. Passing the ski centre (yes, the ski centre)
we parked at the ‘Nick of Pendle’ and set off.
The summit quickly became invisible, and the wind and rain howled at our
backs. After three-quarters of an hour,
Lindsay turned around. A brief
discussion ensued. We turned back into
the storm and downwards again. The
raindrops beat at our faces like hailstones, saving any expensive costs of
exfoliation, and we retired, completely soaked through. Our coaching inn in Bolton-by-Bowland allowed
us to put most of our clothing in the boiler room. I had the impression that they were well used
to this requirement. Socks and gloves
could be wrung out, leaving puddles in the washbasin, before being draped over
the towel rails. Later in the day, in
fresh clothing, we tried a different walk, but another front came through and
we retired to bed at around 5pm to get warm (well it was a Grade II listed
building with sash windows) and to hold a council of war. The forecast for Monday was the same, so on
Monday morning we left the Forest of Bowland with unfinished business, admiring
the flowing streams and the little stone bridges surrounded by daffodils, and
made our way along the A59 towards Preston and the M6.
.jpg) |
| Failed attempt at Pendle Hill |
Clitheroe has more about it than just being an old Lancashire
cotton town. Before WWI there were 13
cotton mills – now of course closed. But
it was a border town (the Ribble valley being an important route across the
Pennines) with a Norman castle dating from the 12th century. Henry VI was briefly imprisoned there during
the Wars of the Roses, before being transferred to the Tower of London. The entire site is now a war memorial, and
the WWI soldier statue placed in 1923, with downward gaze, faces south towards
Pendle Hill.
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| Clitheroe war memorial on Castle Hill for those killed in WWI. Pendle Hill is indistinct in the rain. |
Few trips away are without their little compensations in
people watching. On Saturday evening,
two couples were seated near us. The
older of the two men expounded at length on Avoriaz, and his skiing advice to the
others who were contemplating a trip there.
So detailed, long, and laborious were his pronouncements that we
christened him ‘Mr Avoriaz’. Having
exhausted a detailed description of the lift system he moved on to
avalanches. ‘Avalanches I Have Known.’ The following morning, over his porridge and
black pudding, he was still outlining the delights and pitfalls of skiing in
Avoriaz.
Friday March 20th
‘There’s no place like home’, as Dorothy had to say and
repeat, clicking her ruby slippers, but we are off again – to London, for a
twins’ joint 70th birthday party.
Their achievements, decorations, awards, and those of their children and
partners leave us feeling like spectators, but the hospitality was wonderful and
we value their friendship. It also allowed
us to experience some clement weather for a change, before Arctic air is
expected to sweep in on March 25th.
There is an exhibition at the Serpentine North gallery of
the latest works by David Hockney. In
his late 80s, he remains busy and productive.
One of his favourite works is the Bayeux tapestry, and he has visited it
many times. His iPad paintings of his ‘Year
in Normandie’ have been seamlessly stitched together (I realise stitched is a
misnomer) in a long Bayeux-like continuous display around three walls of the
building. Such a tranquil and beautiful
experience. In the centre of the gallery
are some of his newest works, playful pieces with deliberately distorted
perspective. It also includes some
abstract work, though I have seen a recent interview with Hockney in which he
deplores the vast amount of abstract art around today.
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| Hockney. A Year in Normandy. 2025. Detail. |
.jpg) |
| McLeod. Fat Lady with Hockney. 2026. |
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| Joseph Wright of Derby. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768. |
Too often, as I see it, when you look at a piece of abstract
art, you have no idea at all whether the artist is a good draughtsman or
painter of realistic subjects. Too often
it is the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Having made my final ex cathedra statement, it is
probably time to pack up the blog for the time being. We slide towards next weekend when the clocks
go forward, and the weekend after when it is Easter.
But here are some sights of London in the Spring weather:
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| Chinatown |
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| Green Park |
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| A grey heron wanders around St James's park |
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| St James, near the RAC club |
