Beside the sea… in London
At the moment the South Bank is home to a ‘Summer of Fun’ festival – isn’t that a nice proposition? There’s a British seaside theme with stripey beach huts, a … Read more
Veronica Peerless
Corporate communications
I had to go on a training course last week, entitled ‘Communication Skills for Managers’. I was not relishing the idea. 1) I’m not a manager 2) I don’t like … Read more
Traffic calming
Usually a patch of ground on the edge of a road is either planted with some cursory, sad-looking shrubs or nothing at all, but in Finsbury Park there are two … Read more
The Lanesborough
Timekeeping isn’t one of my strong points but I actually arrived outside the Lanesborough Hotel with plenty of time to spare the other day (for reasons, see my previous post). … Read more
Colin’s garden
Colin is a man after my own heart – he’s greenfingered but he rents his flat, and is limited to gardening in containers. This he does very well, as the … Read more
Hedge finds
If you’ve got a privet hedge, you may as well do something fun with it and entertain passersby. In this quiet street in Highbury there are back-to-back cats and a … Read more
The Yellow Book
I met a French woman at a party earlier in the year. She was married to an English chap and said that she’d heard that in Dorset (where her husband … Read more
Salady Saturday
I went for lunch at my friend Naomi’s house today. She’d made a salad entirely out of leaves from her garden, plus nasturtium and borage flowers (which taste like cucumber). … Read more
The Watermill
Temperatures can hit 40 degrees in summer in southern Turkey but at Die Wassermuhle near Butterfly Valley, it’s always cool. That’s because the gardens of the hotel are almost entirely … Read more