Author: janh1

Part-time hedonist.

A cracking time

You know how it is when you come back from having a couple of days away, people are interested. They ask you where you went. If you had a good time.

When I told them we’d been to Weymouth for a surprise weekend, the reaction was generally that of masked disappointment with the subtext “Oh. ..so he only took you to Weymouth..hmm…that’s a bit crap.”

It’s as though they were hoping for Cornwall, or Brittany or Bali. Actually they were really hoping I’d been somewhere they had visited, of which they have fond memories; a cloudless summer, a fabulous beach, maybe a Kirrin Island look-alike that they could swim to at low tide.

Instead of all that, they said “Yeah. I remember going there as a kid with mum and dad, year after year. Have they still got the trampolines?”

They didn’t say “It was wonderful.” or “It was really good.” Their unsaid words indicated there weren’t too many happy memories. Caravan holidays, no doubt. Continue reading “A cracking time”

Get ready baby… for some hot gerbil lurve

I’m not going to go into this but had to post.

This is the kind of stuff I aspire to write.

The fact that it wins an award too is the icing on the gerbil-themed cake.

Story here

That prize-winning quote:

“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

Could be worse, I suppose.  Could be ferrets…

A couple of nice paintings

One of my favourite paintings is in the news today. Teacher Barbara Mills’ research enabled her to discover and reveal for the first time the precise location whereSir John Everett Millais painted it – the Hogsmill in Six Acre Meadow, Old Malden, Surrey. There is even the fallen willow.

Continue reading “A couple of nice paintings”

Ferry good cider

I’m not very imaginative with my cycle rides – at least, the ones from home that I fit in before or after work during the week.

They are all within the same fifteen mile radius with innumerable variations; some off-road, some on road, some circular, some there-and-backs, some figures of eight, some routes reminiscent of tangled knitting wool, some no-hands practice, some  little hills several times. Continue reading “Ferry good cider”

The Crucible

So, chemistry. Hardly remember any. Teacher was a short chap with specs and a hair-cut from the 1940’s who I don’t remember speaking to me once. I think he mostly bonded with boys.  Co-valent bonding, no doubt. The chemistry swots were speccie geeky chaps who averted their eyes from us girls and already liked chemistry and physics.

Although I was mad keen on biology, I made no sense of the hieroglyphics that this teacher scrawled all over the blackboard. It might as well have been ancient Egyptian.

I felt it was a knowledge gap that I should attempt to address so I got a ticket to ‘Chemistry – a Volatile History’ – a talk at the Cheltenham Science Festival. I thought it might put chemistry in perspective at last; make sense of the carboys of noxious stuff that my bonkers uncle used to keep in the kitchen cupboards at my nan’s house and mix up on her kitchen table. Continue reading “The Crucible”

Hay: over and out

So Sunday, the last day at Hay Festival was pretty idyllic.   A sunny afternoon relaxed into a glorious  evening and the final remnants of the sun-worshipping literati lay on the lawn reading or splayed out in one of the deckchairs.

Listening to Stephen Fry in the Barclays tent, a guttural bleating interrupted the proceedings and made me think “Hah. Some farmer’s phone with a comic sheep ring-tone. How apt.” Continue reading “Hay: over and out”

Hay ho

I started writing this when it was wet and cold at Hay – so cold you could see your breath – but somehow still worth it.

Not the kind of weather to spend any time at all on the dizzy heights of Lord Hereford’s Knob. Oh no.

Hay Festival’s weather is fickle. It alters in a heartbeat and a glimpse of sun suddenly makes all those deckchairs on the central lawn advertising holidays in Spain seem suddenly so appropriate. Continue reading “Hay ho”

For OZ – Another view of Portugal

The Algarve.  One good set of pics deserves another, OZ but I’m afraid these are predictable tourist snaps rather than any kind of indicator of what the Algarve is all about.   We were there maybe six years back staying with friends near Albufeira. Away from the touristy stuff and the beaches, we found cork forests, atmospheric towns, pretty villages, good restaurants, painted boats and a rich history of oceanic adventure and discovery. Continue reading “For OZ – Another view of Portugal”

Coast

And so, once in a blue moon, there comes a TV series that enthralls, uplifts, informs, makes you howl laughing, feel nauseous and is only very occasionally tedious.

That series is Coast. I’ve been watching the programmes for what seems like years and I’m not fed-up yet. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been caught in its trawler net as it plies the waters around this sceptred isle with a little detour for the less sceptred tax haven isles a stone’s throw from France. Continue reading “Coast”