Articles by Robert Tickler

By now I know the layout and workings of the hotel and have established my routine which one would hardly term taxing. It depends on your expectations and priorities and all I wanted,  after a festive period which proved not so festive, was “me time”. Thus I read, walk the beautiful gardens, [...]

Harold MacMillan’s famous dictum applied more to the political arena than the domestic one but it’s an apt one for a series of mini-disasters at my home over the so-called festive period. The first was the collapse of a Venetian blind. I had long informed the local blind company that the [...]

My late father lived from 1923 to 2013 and witnessed most of the great events of the twentieth and early twenty first century. We had many fascinating conversations and I wish I had preserved his thoughts on these events, notably the Second World War. However, when I asked him to name life-changing [...]

No longer living in London I was wholly unaware that Kings Cross had had a total makeover. I knew the run down area in my youth as my father was Chief Vaccination officer of the Hospital of Tropical Diseases in York Way. I once asked him how he obtained this position to which he replied with [...]

On Saturday night I attended a quiz night to raise funds for a local adult learning centre I attend. It was was bucketing down all day and I had 10 minutes from my previous appointment to give my cat his insulin injection, shower and change and organise myself. That feeling of rush is a difficult [...]