October 2019
Every house has a story, some happy, some sad, some mythical, some notorious. Here at Marchmont Cottage it was said to be inhabited by a ghost which caused passers-by to hurry along in case they encountered it! At a recent meeting of the village book club Jane McClelland told us of the infamous connection to her house.
August 2019
Ever since we moved to Piccotts End in 2004, enjoying a meal with friends at Alberto’s in the Old Town has been a regular part of our lives. Making the short walk from our house in winter, spring or summer was an occasion to look forward to. The shock news that he’s decided to close after 23 years has depressed me in all sorts of ways.
March 2019
You meet some interesting people on holiday. In Antigua recently I got chatting to someone with a past he’d prefer to forget. At first he didn’t let on about it, just that he’d been a musician and composer. Now in his 70s he said that these days he spent most of his time writing for a motoring magazine. All I could gather wast that his name was Simon.
October 2018
Everyone over the age of 50 can remember the Summer of 76. To that we can now add the Summer of 2018. Not quite the same ring but hot it was! It would be nice to think we’ll get more of the same but I doubt it. Our summers are notoriously unreliable and while I’d like to be proved wrong, I predict we’ll be back to the usual mixture of sunshine and showers for the next 40 years!
April 2018
Good to see one of our residents reaching out to bring peace and calm to some ruffled radio airwaves! Reading the pages of The Spectator magazine this month I chanced across a review of the week’s radio programmes. The reviewer noted that after listening to a programme about Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, it was a relief to tune into Radio 3 and hear the soothing voice of Penny Gore with an appreciation of the Czech composer Janáček.
January 2018
Oh dear! My blogs have fallen way behind. Again. Lives are so busy there is seldom time to write down what you’re doing or thinking. One topic that occupied a day for me in the last few weeks was the death of the French pop star Johnny Hallyday. This only registered on my radar because I happened to be in Paris on the day of his funeral. My wife, being French, decided we should go to the Champs Elysées and watch the procession.
August 2017
I’m savouring these last few weeks of the school holidays on our rural roads. August is a month when you don’t have to stop every few minutes, squeeze up to the hedgerow and let a fellow traveller pass. My pick of the sights on my way to work are often floral, for example the flowers under the signs at the Marchmont end of the village and at Mill Close. At the other end of the beauty spectrum is the Link Road roundabout, pictured above. I’m sure that the wild flower plantation was created with
July 2017
So here we are, another summer washout! Sounds familiar? Looking back at my July blog of a couple of years back I noted that the day the schools broke up the sun stopped shining. Same story this year. The first two weeks of July promised a Summer of 76. But then came July 15th, St Swithin’s Day, and it rained. Now we’re all paying the price! I
February 2017
Enough is enough! After more than 40 years as a Daily Mail reader, 11 of them working at the paper, I have finally cancelled it. It has
been some years in the planning but the Mail’s appallingly biased Brexit campaign finally did it. As a staunch Remainer, and now Remoaner, I found the paper’s hate-mongering anti-European stance a disgrace to journalism. Now I’m a Times reader.
January 2017
It’s all change at the Attic cafe, one of our favourite haunts in Berkhamsted. It’s had a few incarnations in its time, once briefly under the ownership of James Hannaway, of The Rex. James was a regular face at the Attic until something fairly cataclysmic must have occurred and he was never seen again. The old Attic had a certain charm with its period