The goddess revealed

I could never watch Nigella Lawson’s cookery programmes.

I tried a few, but quite frankly all that sensous finger-licking and general lusciousness left me cold – and it was quite clear she was primarily selling the whole “domestic goddess/perfect family” lifestyle aspiration with tasty, reliable recipes only a kind of accessory. Continue reading “The goddess revealed”

Hurrah for local newspaper website message boards

I’m sharing this because it made me laugh.

 

It’s comical that any new “bar venue” in Gloucester could be described as ‘classy’ and the comments, as sometimes happens here aboard the Chariot, are comic and add up to so much more than the sum of their original part.

 

Look out for Tarquin Cordwangler-Smythe!

 

Albania

First of all, a confession, apart from the first shot of the beach, all of the better pictures are stock images. It was hissing it down with rain the whole time I was in Albania, and I was wrapped up in meetings most of the time in any case. The shots of the run-down housing, which give a better impression of what it is actually like, are mine, taken on a walk between the hotel and a nearby restaurant – which was, actually, excellent – on the first evening.

Those pillboxes are everywhere in Albania, a legacy of Hoxha’s paranoia. Crossing the land border into Albania is like travelling through a WW1 landscape, lines of fortifications – that would, of course, have delayed a modern Army for about, oh, I don’t know, a cigarette?

The last shot shows that, if you get out of the crappy, run-down, crowded cities, life can be quite pleasant for some – the rest of course, are on the dole in Dover or begging on the tube. See the slideshow