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The Premiership play offs

Yesterday I watched both Premiership Rugby semi-finals, the first Saracens v Harlequins in the company of Derek Williams. We are both fully paid up members of TV-watching as opposed to the stadium attending. We enjoyed the build up with some toasted panini and San Pellegrino Limonatas. In fact the [...]

June 12, 2022 // 0 Comments

Problems at the Hotel du Vin Cannizaro

Readers will recall my distrust of restaurants with fine views. The same applies to hotels. The Hotel du Vin Cannizaro is a fine white palatial stucco mansion set in parklands by Wimbledon Common. Wimbledon has many amenities: the Common, the All England tennis championship, theatre, a picturesque [...]

June 12, 2022 // 0 Comments

Fighting nature is sometimes futile

Given its general mission of providing observations upon modern life from the viewpoint of those of us who happen to be beyond the first flush of youth, it would be strange indeed if – amongst all the inevitable and wondrous advances that science, technology and cultural developments bring [...]

June 12, 2022 // 0 Comments

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Last night at the Queen Elizabeth Hall I attended a concert given by the Orchestra of the Age of enlightenment (OAE) conducted by Sir Andras Schiff, who also played the piano. The OAE play historic instruments and the piano was a Graf pianoforte. I spent Wednesday evening in the company of a [...]

June 10, 2022 // 0 Comments

Bad relations/Cressida Connolly

This is an outstanding novel by a writer scaling the heights of British fiction. It begins in the Crimean War when William Gale is tending for his recently slain brother Algernon. He sends a lock of his hair home. Gale returns to his estates in Cornwall but – due to then undiagnosed post [...]

June 8, 2022 // 0 Comments

Jubilee reflections

Although over the weekend Chez Nous was somewhat dominated by weather considerations – we had two what would normally be regarded as serious “yellow triangle” Thunderstorm Warnings that in the event failed to materialise – by choice I still took the opportunity to dip in and out of the [...]

June 6, 2022 // 0 Comments

1st day of Test: no new dawn, same old precipitation.

The first day at Lords is always a magical event. I always arrive early, not just to avoid the queues, but to take in the atmosphere and to look down at the sward of green and impressive modern and Victorian architecture. Ticket prices were not on my mind but by the end of an eventful day there was [...]

June 3, 2022 // 0 Comments

The place of sport in life

Some might argue that the belief held by some that world sports constitute little more than contests between power-hungry nations vying for global pride, supremacy, power, influence and control continued by means other than war has been somewhat undermined by events over the last 100 days in [...]

June 3, 2022 // 0 Comments

My sporting weekend

Sam Burns  won the Charles Schwab US PGA at Colonial Texas and – in another play-off – Victor Perez bested Ryan Fox the Dutch Open. I salvaged some self-respect and moolah with a each-way win on Davis Riley. Riley came on the radar a few months ago. He is a youngster who did well on [...]

June 2, 2022 // 0 Comments

Resistance/Halik Kochanski

This is a detailed (too detailed in fact) account of the resistance movement in World War Two, principally in France, Norway, the Low Countries and Bohemia. Although the author provides an abundance of statistical information that is difficult to absorb, there is no glossary of the resistance [...]

June 1, 2022 // 0 Comments

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