Midsummer on the beach
I may have mentioned once or twice how much I love living in this inconvenient corner of North Yorkshire. However, there are some points in the year when it’s especially…
Field guns in the Kremlin
The other week, I took a little jaunt over to see my old mate P and his family in Moscow. I’ve been promising to visit him since he first moved…
Restoring a 1950s trilby
As those who’ve come across me in the unflattering light of the real world will know, I’m quite fond of wearing hats. They’re unfashionable and affected, of course, but then…
The Easter reset
A while ago, I was reading a fun article by Jeremy Anderberg on temporal landmarks, the basic idea being that there are ‘certain dates that naturally inspire us to turn…
Mead fit for a king
‘Turbulent old time, the 17th century. It was the age of characters like Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke of Buckingham; of Oliver Cromwell, Galileo and Guy Fawkes; of civil war,…
No place like home
I’ve fluked some grand assignments in my time, but there’s nothing quite like writing about home. I moved up to North Yorkshire full-time three and a half years ago, but…
Faces from the past
When I moved north, most of the stuff from my London flat went into a lockup in Scarborough. It was a temporary measure to begin with, but life developments since…
Century-old life advice
I came across an interesting object while I was ferreting through a box of memorabilia just now. It’s a letter, sent exactly 99 years ago, by my great-grandfather to his…
The Zillertal Alps with Peter Habeler
The Ramblers always give me the best jobs. First there was Bavaria, then the Dolomites, then Matt, the editor, got in touch asking if I might fancy going to the…
The Pennine Way
The reason we had trouble finding the entrance to our campsite was because you had to go through a working scrapyard. As you emerged from the piles of crumpled Mondeos…
