Category Archives: Books

How making the most of a Melbourne winter saved me from travel envy

Over the winter friends and family have shared northern hemisphere holidays photos – lots of wish-you-were-here vibes. There’ve been pictures of sardines grilling in Southern Spain, Gothic churches in Germany, flower-lined canals in Utrecht, dazzling white-washed vistas in Santorini, yodel-inducing Swiss alpine scenes, lush green coastal paths in Devon, quirky markets and Lord’s Cricket Ground in London and windswept beaches at the northernmost tip of Denmark.

I’ve enjoyed looking at the pictures and have imagining myself there in mind and body, but I haven’t felt an ounce of envy. I’ve been just fine and dandy staying put in Melbourne. The Melbourne winter can bite, especially the wind, but it’s mild compared to a UK winter. Although I feel the cold, there’s nothing more energising than a rain- and wind-lashed walk on the beach with the dog children – Rupert, the dachsie, my canine nephew, has ‘over-wintered’ with me and Bertie.

I enjoy the seasonal variation – summer can be very intense requiring a lot of sunscreen slip, slop, slap – and finding warmth in soups, stews, candles, hot baths and snuggling with the dogs on the sofa. There are grey days in the mix which make me feel right at home but there are also some glorious sunny days in the high teens, when there’s no better place to hang out than in my courtyard garden.

Immersing myself in artsy things has provided another form of nourishment these last few months. One of the zanier exhibitions my friend Kaliopi and I went to was Swingers – The Art of Mini Golf. I had no idea that mini golf had its origins in feminism. In the 19th Century a group of Scottish women, rebelling at being told that swinging a golf stick was unladylike, commissioned a 9-hole putting-only course which became known as the Himalayas due to the uneven terrain. The course still exists today, alongside St Andrews Golf Course near Edinburgh.

Swingers is an interactive exhibition staged in the former Victorian Rail Institute ballroom upstairs at Flinders Street Station. We navigated the nine-hole golf course created by nine female and gender-diverse artists. My favourite was the first hole, a big, bold and colourful desert scene by Yankunytjatjaraartist Kaylene Whiskey, complete with Greyhound bus and featuring Cathy Freeman and Dolly Parton. Putting is harder than it looks – you’re never going to get me playing golf – but we navigated the course as best we could.

Other works included videos of the Teletubbies, an eerie Carnival Clown face, spooky scenes reminiscent of the Mexican Day of the Dead and, at one of the holes, we had to attach a latex animal tail and swing it with our bodies to putt the ball. Well, what can I say, maybe if you’re as flexible as a hula hoop dancer… Much hilarity ensued but it did nothing for our technique.

Another big pop of colour came courtesy of another feminist – in July I went up to Bendigo in regional Victoria to see Frida Kahlo: in her own image. As well as her paintings, self-portraits and the fabulous costumes, jewellery and flowers that she wore are some of her personal items that were sealed in a bathroom for 50 years after her death. These include lipsticks, powder compacts, medicines and herbal tinctures. As well as polio aged six, she suffered a horrendous accident in 1925 leading to life-long injuries when a streetcar collided with the bus she was travelling in. During her recovery she began to paint and used mirrors and an easel positioned over her bed. She underwent multiple surgical interventions, lived with chronic pain and had to wear a corset every day from 1944.

What shines through is her resilience, her deep love of animals and the natural world, her courage not only to channel her pain and disability into art but her readiness to challenge the prevailing societal and political norms. She was the daughter of a German/Hungarian father and a Mexican mestiza mother and, rather than follow the European-influenced fashions of the time, she honoured her Indigenous heritage and wore the traditional blouses, skirts and shawls from the Tehuantepec Isthmus, a matriarchal society. And although her life was cut short by gangrene in 1953, she lived to the full. She and Diego Rivera had an up and down marriage, they both had affairs – Frida even had a brief affair with Leon Trotsky. She was a member of the Mexican Communist party and painted one of her plaster corsets with a hammer and sickle.

Continuing with all things Hispanic, and following my March trip to Malaga, I saw five exquisite films at the Spanish Film Festival and luxuriated in the cadence and rhythms of the language. My two favourites were Wolfgang, a warm-hearted comedy about a nine-year-old highly intelligent boy with autism spectrum disorder, who re-establishes a relationship with his father following the death of his mother. And Ocho, a love story set across eight decades and eight defining moments in Spain’s history including the Civil War which split friends and families apart. A masterful and magical movie from the 2025 Malaga Film Festival.

A creole mass – Missa Criolla by Argentinian Ariel Ramirez – in a city church was a revelation. In place of the traditional Latin Mass, this was a folksy mass featuring dance, instrumental and song forms from Argentina blending Indigenous, African and European influences. The concert included other gems ranging from Spanish classical guitar pieces and a Peruvian hymn in the Quechua language to an Afro-Brazilian chant by Villa-Lobos, and Libertango, a piece composed by Argentinian tango composer Piazzolla. You’ll likely know the famous instrumental version, but we heard the choral adaption by Oscar Escalada with voices playing the parts of instruments.

I came out of the concert with an Andean beat pulsing in my veins, the maracas sounding in my ears and added South America to my travel wish list.  There’s been a strong Hispanic thread this winter. A few months ago, I went to a jazz club in north Melbourne to hear the Brazjaz Ensemble headed up by Carlos Ferreira, a Samba specialist from Rio de Janeiro. It was the real deal – mellow, moody and intense – and the newly graduated (2022) flautist, Yael Zamir, gave an extraordinary performance. The set included about five songs, two of which I recognised from a CD I used to play in my London days in the 90s.  

I’m a big fan of escapist musicals – it’s easier than meditation – that transport me to a make-believe world. Beetlejuice with Eddie Perfect was no exception. It’s a dark comedy about ghosts, zombies, life and death with a great score including a couple of Harry Belafonte favourites – Day-O and Shake Senora.

I went with my friend Angela and her daughter Alice, and we indulged in a Beetlejuice-themed high tea beforehand which included ghoulish lime green cocktail, black and white sugar snakes, dark chocolate and pepper scones, shrunken head tarte and a smoking concoction that added to the mystique.

This Sunday, I celebrated the last day of winter by going up to Kyneton to see Alice – a rising star – perform in Mary Poppins with Sprout Theatre, a youth musical company in the Macedon Ranges.  A wonderfully high energy production performed by a cast of talented young people ranging from tiny tots in the junior class to teenagers in the senior classes. Beautifully staged and choreographed, it was a knockout with great singing and dancing including coordinated moves and can-can kicks that must have taken a fair bit of rehearsing. As a two left feet person, I was impressed.  Absolutely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Mary Poppins is one of my all-time favourite musicals, and its story and messages are as relevant today as they ever were; family is more important than work and money, find the silver linings and positives “Just a spoonful of sugar”, and believe in the power of creativity and imagination: “Anything can happen if you let it.” Sound advice!

Back in England: family, fine art, an old flame, a (very) old tree and teeth on the table

A highlight of this trip was meeting up with an old flame for the first time in over 25 years. We met in the ‘80s in London when I was his lodger and the world was a very different place. After years of communicating via Christmas cards between America and Australia, we were, at last, going to be in London at the same time. The anticipation and getting ready were half the fun. Limited to a travel wardrobe and my hair out of shape, my beloved sister came to the rescue. Despite our combined age of just over 130, we were like teenagers again. She helped me get ready, backcombed my hair, lent me a coat and scarf and some jazzy earrings. It was wonderfully bonding.

Lance and I met at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Piccadilly. Honouring the Club’s formal dress code, he was wearing an elegant blue suit and orange silk tie – the word dashing comes to mind. He’d hardly changed at all, and we effortlessly took up where we left off in what proved to be a fun and fond evening. Dining on the best of British at the wonderfully-named Noble Rot in Mayfair, we reminisced, caught up on all the years in between and shared unrealistic ex-pat dreams – he and his family now live in San Francisco – about how nice it’d be to own a pad in London and to stay for three months every year.

He remains a stalwart drinker, a bon viveur, a keen golfer and, while politically poles apart from me, he’s stylish, has artistic sensitivity and impeccable taste. He always did have a dry sense of humour. Quote of the evening had to be “Well, Cha (he’s the only person in the world who calls me Cha) it’s good to know, as a former lover, that you have found happiness with a dog.”

In a small world moment, Lance had seen the exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 at the Met that I was about to see at the National Gallery. In fact, some of the photos I am sharing are his.  It was an exquisite exhibition, and an extraordinary one with many of the works reassembled for the first time in centuries.

To quote from the National Gallery:

Simone Martini’s Orsini polyptych, split between Antwerp, Paris and Berlin is together again. His panels for the Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico altarpiece are reunited. 

Panels from Duccio’s Maestà, one of the largest and most complex altarpieces ever produced, on loan from Madrid, Fort Worth, New York and Washington and his ‘Virgin and Child’ and ‘Crucifixion’ triptychs come together.

Siena, I learnt, was one of the world’s richest cities and a major centre for artistic innovation and experimentation before the Italian Renaissance and up till the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348.  

What I loved was the sweep of the exhibition from the large, commissioned altarpieces, shimmering gold, to smaller paintings as well as ivory carvings, intricate enamelled boxes, reliquaries with fragments of bones, silks and textiles from Iran and Turkey, marble and wooden sculptures and illustrated manuscripts. The level of detail and the vividness of the colours – particularly the  blues, oranges, reds, purples and pinks – pulled me in as did the emotion and humanity in many of the pictures; the tender face of Mary, baby Jesus reaching up to pull aside the veil from his mother’s face and, my favourite, a picture of Jesus as a boy being told off by his parents and sporting a sulky teenage face and crossed arms.

Jesus getting scolded!

Seeing great nephews and nieces is always a joy on my UK trips, the catch being that it’s all or nothing, and I miss out on many of their milestones from trip to trip. I enjoyed reading Hairy Maclary to Dougie, who is now coming up for two, walking, talking and being schooled in the art of calling me Lot-Lot.

Up in Nottinghamshire with Mum, I caught up with my great nieces – Millie and Imogen from Yorkshire. Millie at 14 months was too young to recognise me but I got a great welcome Imogen, who is nearly five. I’d decorated the dining room with bunting and balloons, but much more exciting was doing the washing up standing on the step and playing peek-a-boo through the (rather old-fashioned) serving hatch between kitchen and dining room. That and ragging around with my eldest brother, the most devoted grand-father ever.

Mum had a rocky start to the year but has fought back amazingly well. So it was a triumph to manage a fun day out together and lay down new memories. At 93 it’s a case of carpe diem. We went down the A1 to Lincolnshire to see a heritage-listed tree – not just any old tree but possibly the oldest known apple tree in the world. The tree where Isaac Newton had his aha gravity moment.

The tree is in the garden of the Woolsthorpe Manor (now a National Trust property) where Newton was born in 1643. Inside the house is the room where he conducted his experiments on light using a prism, a recreated dining room, kitchen and bedroom with lots of heavy oak furniture, and exhibition on the 17th Century uses of urine. These ranged from mouth wash, skin softening, reducing wrinkles (I’m not up for trying it on the crow’s feet!) and stain removal to making gunpowder and warding off witches. It was also prized as a valuable side-hustle commodity you could sell to soap-makers and tanners – there was no Airbnb and Uber back then.

The apple tree, somewhat gnarled and bent, has proved amazingly resilient and survived being felled by a major storm in 1820. And, even better, the tree has offshoots all around the world including in Canada, the US, Argentina, Germany, South Africa, Korea, Japan and Australia. And the tree’s Australian descendants are not far from where I live.  

We enjoyed the spring sun but there was a biting wind, so we warmed up with a sandwich lunch in the barn and I enjoyed a nice British cuppa, one of 13.6 million served in National Trust cafés annually!

The weeks with Mum in her village near Retford in Nottinghamshire had some surprisingly busy days whether it was medical appointments, relatives coming over, neighbours popping in and out, the window cleaner appearing at the top windows early one morning when we were only half dressed, the boiler being serviced, supermarket shop-ups, a trip to the tip to get rid of rubbish from the garage – and managing all the things old age throws at you.

Mum and I had a few fraught moments due to an unholy alliance of old age irritations – hearing, digestion, eyes, poor sleep and anxiety topped off with a very nasty cold which we both succumbed to. Mum had two macular eye injections in one week, and for one of them I managed to leave all forms of payment behind on the kitchen table. Emerging from the injection feeling wobbly and seeing black dots, Mum wasn’t best pleased that I had no means of paying for the parking, which would likely result in a written penalty. You’re never too old to get a good ticking-off.  Luckily a kind-hearted woman gave us the £1.75.

However, that evening dinner was a disaster. I’d managed to make the sausage skins tough and the broccoli too crunchy (Goldilocks would have had a field day). Mum, cross and tired and unable to chew adequately, took out her dental plate and put it on the table where it sat accusingly. Mum’s teeth were out, and mine were firmly clenched. A bit of a Swords at Dawn moment!

Needless to say, we’d moved on by the next morning and, girls together, we both had 10.30am hair appointments – nothing like a haircut to make you feel better. Adjacent basins wondered my brother? Not quite but that’d be a good title for an Alan Bennett play!

I timed my trip to include Mother’s Day on my last weekend, and my sister came up from London to join us. Flowers, chocolates, coffee by the canal in Retford and roast chicken in the Aga. And time to read Mum a few more stories from Craig Brown’s A Voyage around the Queen, an entertaining biography with a difference. I bought it on the strength of this review from The Times:  “An unconventional tribute that offers a snapshot of almost a century of social history with a mix of royal insanity, and superior anecdotes, from farts and corgis to Paul McCartney and poets laureate.” And it absolutely delivered; Mum, I’ll be back to read you more extraordinary Royal tales (and tails) before you know it.

Rediscovering Spain (Part 1 of 2) – Madrid to Malaga

It had been a long time since I last visited Spain – probably back in the ‘90s when I made a couple of brief visits for work during my publishing days. Many moons ago I studied Spanish (and German) at university, and even tuning into the children’s cartoons playing above the luggage carousel at Madrid airport was exciting; just as well as my case took nearly an hour to appear!

Despite the bracing early March weather, eight degrees and wet and windy (it was mid-20s when I left Melbourne), I was off and out the minute I’d checked into my hotel, keen to make the most of my afternoon and evening in Madrid.

I was staying in the Barrio de las Letras, the literary quarter, home to many of Spain’s writers from the 17th-century Golden Age, a deliberate choice as my degree was largely literature-based. All the names came flooding back, Cervantes (Don Quixote), Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina who, in his play El Burlador (seducer) de Sevilla), introduced the world to Don Juan, the charming hero-villain, a character with folk legend status made famous by Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni and the subject of many books, plays and films since.  I was in my element walking along elegant, cobbled streets dotted with early spring blossoms in the company of these literary greats who were variously honoured in colourful tiled mosaics, street signs, cafés, Metro Station names and quotations engraved on the pavements.  

I barely noticed the cold and that my feet were soaked through to my socks. Such was the excitement and cultural immersion. I had a few pit stops – an arty café where I dipped into a slim novella, Réquiem Por Un Campesino Español, one of my university books, first published in 1950, and a few tapas in a thronging and lively covered market.

Further on I stumbled on a rehearsal for Semana Santa (Holy Week) which will be in full flow as I write this over Easter.  14 men from a cofradía (a fraternity/brotherhood) were bearing a float weighed down with suitcases in preparation for the Holy Week processions. All wearing white runners, they performed a kind of slow-shoe-shuffle in time to the recorded music, their heads covered in a white cloth, a stand-in for the capirote, a hood with a conical tip, a symbol of penance, that conceals the face. I admired their dedication turning out on a cold and wet Saturday afternoon!

A few days later in Malaga, I peeked through the heavy wooden doors of a cofradía and saw the bulky shapes of sculptures (most likely Christ, the Virgin Mary and various saints) covered in cloth and mounted on a float, awaiting the Easter processions. These brotherhoods are Catholic organisations made up of lay people (men and women) who carry out charitable and religious works and events in the community. They play a key role during Semana Santa.

This was just one of many examples of timelessness and enduring tradition that I was delighted – and reassured – to find still in existence in Spain today. It’s 40 years since I spent four or so months in Granada as part of my Spanish degree – way before the distracted digital age of everything being available at the swipe of a screen.

I took the train to Malaga from Madrid’s Atocha Station the next morning. Atocha is a destination in itself with its glass and iron-clad domed roof – an old trainshed – complete with tropical garden. I was on a no-frills ticket, and it’s a three-and-a-half-hour journey from the centre of Spain down to Andalucia in the South. There wasn’t much to look at on the way but I got chatting to a young female student and soon realised how rusty my Spanish was!

My goal was to get to Malaga in time for the Entierro del Boquerón (burial of the sardine), an annual ritual on the last Sunday of Carnaval, when festivalgoers mark the end of Carnaval. I had missed the midday jamboree of music in Calle Lario (I was still on the train) but got down to Malagueta Beach by 5pm and was surrounded by revellers in their costumes, tears painted on their faces, marking sorrow that the fun was ending and the sobriety of Lent fast approaching. Nobody quite knows how the sardine tradition came about – maybe it’s a nod to Malaga’s maritime heritage – but the message is clear, it’s about closure.  

I stood on the wall overlooking the beach to get a better look. Delightfully irreverent, the sardine sat atop a float, flashed its blue and green-glinting scales and sported a jester’s hat. From what I could see the fish was made of metal and layers of fabric and paper – perfect combustible material. Although the weather was squally, the fish was set alight, and clouds of black smoke blew back towards the city. In no time at all, all that remained were the spines of the fish.  Buried indeed. What joy to be part of the action. I felt as if I had time-travelled to another world.

Just back from Malagueta Beach is Malaga’s Pompidou Centre. I had no idea that the Paris Museum has a Spanish branch. But you can’t miss it with its Mondrian-style brightly coloured squares. It was open till 8pm so I drifted in and went to an excellent exhibition called Place-ness: Inhabiting Space, that explored how humans relate to (and ruin!) their environment. There were many references to exploiting the natural environment for productivity and profit, and a section with paintings and photographs exploring the impact of industrialisation including ‘non-places’ such as shopping malls, motorway interchanges, abandoned shipyards and airports. Some of my favourite pieces include an idyllic Alpine landscape with a shower and tap attached like an elephant’s trunk in the centre of the painting reminding city dwellers of the source of their water supply, and a pair of Armani suit trousers hanging on a clothesline, the pockets filled with plants and earth, an allegory by the Romanian artist about the immigrant experience in Italy and being uprooted.

For dinner, I found a delightful restaurant with earthy home-cooked food near to where I was staying and away from the city centre. Reminding me of carpet sellers in a souk, the more touristy restaurants have hawkers stationed outside brandishing menus printed in three languages. It’s all too pushy for me.

Small and cosy with the menu on the blackboard and small chalk-painted wooden tables and retro chairs, restaurant Oliva was a great find. The welcome tapa- served with a drink – was an exquisite flavoursome stew of chickpeas made with a hint of chorizo and lots of vegetables and cooked slowly for hours. Other delicacies included roasted padrón peppers, eggs with asparagus and jamón and a cheesecake made with Queso Manchego. Delicioso!

Such richness on all levels, a feast for body, mind and soul – and I was only just over 24 hours into my Spanish sojourn en route to the UK. Spain Part 2 coming next week.  

In praise of the arts: hope, healing and humanity

Last (Australian) summer I got completely spooked by reading an apocalyptic novel – Leave the World Behind – by Rumaan Alam. Not my usual literary genre of choice, I had picked it up at my brother’s holiday house and couldn’t stop reading. It’s the story of a mysterious blackout along the East Coast of America and the collapse of civilisation. After finishing it I had a sleepless night worrying about the state of the world – everything from climate change, wars, plastics in the environment (and our bodies) to Trump getting back into the White House and AI into the wrong hands.

For me one of the best antidotes to Weltangst and negativity is engaging in the arts.  The arts connect us to joy, inspiration, beauty, creativity and to one another, expand our understanding of the world and humanity, enable us to dream and soar above the everyday – even if fleetingly. We may laugh, we may cry or be filled with awe and wonder.  The arts can also shock, provoke and act as a call to action.

During the endless Melbourne COVID lockdowns, tapping into all the wonderful plays, operas and musicals streamed free from the world’s stages was a silver lining. It also gave me hope and restored my faith in humanity, which was challenged by all the fear-mongering and survival of the fittest behaviours – remember the loo paper hoarding?!

An emerging body of research, strengthened since COVID, highlights the link between engaging/participating in the arts and mental health benefits. It makes it all the more regrettable that public arts funding gets slashed during periods of economic downturn. The cultural sector in the UK, for example, is suffering huge cuts. Interestingly – according to my research – Finland has the highest per capita public arts spending, and is also the country that ranks highest in the UN World Happiness Report – I rest my case.

There’s also opportunity for arts to inform and be integrated into social policy.  A good example of how this can work in action is Streetwise Opera, a UK charity that connects those living with homelessness with world-class artists to co-create bold new works, bringing together diverse voices and stories, improving the wellbeing, confidence and social connectedness of participants. It’s a great example of how an otherwise elite art form can be reinterpreted for social good.  See: https://streetwiseopera.org/

Another immersive, affordable and accessible way to experience the arts across multiple genres is to attend a Fringe Festival. In 2019 I happened to visit Avignon during the Avignon Festival in July and was drawn to Avignon Le Off (their name for the Fringe). I dashed around seeing French theatre (dusting off my A’level French), watching a naked yoga dance (which was rather beautiful and not remotely salacious), a clown-like comedy set in a barber’s shop, and a brilliant and hugely powerful two-person play written and performed by Tim Marriott (of Brittas Empire fame) about Mengele meeting the angel of death on a Brazilian beach. And everywhere I turned there was this artsy soup of drag queens, artists riding unicycles, singers, street artists and acrobats. Some of the works I saw there happened to be Adelaide Fringe shows. And in the magical way the universe works, a year later I ended up doing grant-seeking and advisory work for them.  

Fast forward a few years to August 2023, and I met a colleague from the Adelaide Fringe in Edinburgh when the Festival and Fringe were in full flow. Of course, Edinburgh is where the Fringe movement was born in 1947, when eight theatre groups turned up uninvited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival.

While I mainly focussed on Fringe shows, I also attended a couple of Festival events. A standout was a chat between Iván Fischer, Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra (BFO), and Edinburgh Festival Director, Nicola Benedetti, in the Usher Hall. We – the audience – lay or sat on the floor on bean bags and heard Fischer talk about – and demonstrate – how an orchestra can maintain contemporary relevance away from the formal staging of a classical concert.  Many of the musicians in the BFO play other forms of music, and we heard a selection: Monteverdi madrigals (with instrumentalists singing in the chorus), Argentinian Tango, Klezmer music and rousing wedding music from Transylvania.  An absolute treat.  

Other favourites were a one-man play, In Loyal Company, a true story of missing WWII soldier Arthur Robinson, written and performed by his great-nephew David William Bryan. A hugely energetic, visceral and totally captivating performance, you’re on board his ship in Singapore when it gets bombed, you sweat and shiver through dysentery in Malaya, and feel gutted when he finally returns to Liverpool after the war to find life has moved on in his absence.  Another very poignant play – Shanti and Naz –was about two best friends, one Hindu and one Sikh, during the time of partition in India. By complete contrast A Migrant’s Son (an Adelaide Fringe production) presents a true-life story of the Greek migrant experience to Australia. It’s a musical journey created and sung by Michaela Burger and is full of humour, heart and a few horrors along the way. Burger has a fabulous voice and was joined by a community choir as the chorus.

The New Revue was a sharp satire on (mainly British) current affairs which back then featured Rishi Sunak, BoJo, Keir Starmer, Suella Braverman and Paddington Bear.  How fortunate are those of us who live in democratic societies and enjoy freedom of speech and self-expression. A healthy and vibrant arts scene encourages the exchange of ideas, the exploration of stories and different art forms. There are all too many examples past and present of autocratic regimes suppressing the arts and subverting them for state propaganda.

I loved being in Edinburgh: the buzz and festival vibe; the many tartan and shortbread shops; the whisky; people-watching; pop-up shows and street artists; bagpipes; summer chill and cloud; ancient stone and cobbles; and, towering over it all, the great bastion of the castle. I reconnected with friends I hadn’t seen for many years and stayed in their delightfully rambling house in Morningside. I also stayed with Australian friends in the Borders, and probably drove them mad running around to so many shows.  

I did the same thing in Adelaide in February, partly as my clients at Adelaide Fringe generously gave me a bunch of comp tickets and also because it was Writers’ Week. I ran between the two – literally!

Highlights included a magic show, Charlie Caper, how DID he do it?  I strained to see the tricks and shortcuts but couldn’t. I loved the show and the old world feel conjured up (haha!) by his Fedora, three-piece suit, bow tie and the tasselled lamps. A stand-up comedy session in a converted railway carriage was raw and vulnerable while a Japanese circus, YOAH, was highly stylised and silent – all black and white and techno. Lolly Bag, a one-woman show by the talented Hannah Camilleri was a delight. Very quick, very original, and very funny, she played a whole a range of characters from a curmudgeonly car mechanic to a frazzled Year 8 class teacher, mixing improv and audience participation to great effect.  

Charlie Caper’s Magic Show

I also had the pleasure of seeing two more Tim Marriott plays – we have stayed in touch since I got chatting to him, his wife and dogs in Avignon. Appraisal was a gripping all-too-realistic and, in parts, darkly funny, two-person play about a toxic work culture, the abuse of power and position.  Watson, The Final Problem is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. With Big Ben chiming in the background and a Victorian-era room complete with hat stand, wooden chest, chair, desk and diary, we were transported to London, where Dr Watson looks back on his life and friendship with Sherlock Holmes. Tim Marriott’s masterful monologue took us on a rollercoaster ride culminating in the final demise of the detective at the hands of Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.

Cramming in – you know me – Writer’s Week events, it was a delight listening to Irish writer Anne Enright talking about families, Irish mothers and poets in relation to her new book The Wren, The Wren, and hearing what broadcasters Leigh Sales and Lisa Miller had to say about storytelling. I also attended an event at the Town Hall, where a group of writers each read a piece about family. My absolute favourite was by Martin Flanagan.  

On this 66th birthday he went back where he was born, the Queen Victoria hospital in Tasmania (now offices), to write a letter to his late mother. Warm, moving, fond and funny, it was clearly part of an ongoing conversation with her.  He recalled his friend Michael Long saying: “the silliest thing white fellas say is that you can’t talk to the dead.” Michael, whose mother died with he was 13, has a cup of tea with his mother every day. Martin concluded his birthplace reflection by saying to his mother: “I knew I’d find you here.” I found an extract from this tribute online if you’d like to read more. Go to: https://footyology.com.au/martin-flanagan-talking-to-mum/

That’s what I love about the arts, it all comes down to storytelling in one form or another: . “You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built in the human plan. We come with it.” – Margaret Atwood,

Getting my Brit Fix and Bridging the Divide

If you had told me when I moved to Melbourne in the early 2000s that a pandemic in 2020 would see Australia close its borders, pull up the drawbridge and ban international travel, I would probably have hightailed it back to the UK (I can hear my Mum saying she wishes I had!). Never did I imagine having to face enforced separation from my family and a country I love dearly with an indulgent rose-tinted, nostalgic fondness.

But I/we’ve managed magnificently: we’ve been suitably British and stoic – and even a bit Buddhist (well, I have; ‘this too shall pass’) – and made the best of it. And, as one with strong Luddite tendencies (yes, I still have a paper diary and LOVE it!) I acknowledge that technology and video calling has given us a lifeline and a rich sense of connectedness; in fact, as a family we’re more up to date with each other’s news than we used to be. I am one of four: there’s two of us here, and two of us there and we have a sibling video call every Friday.

And, thanks to the perseverance of my eldest brother Charlie, Mum uses an iPad and is FaceTime literate. Mum and I started out chatting twice a week, then – as COVID dragged on – I suggested a new way to bridge the divide. When Melbourne is nine hours ahead of the UK, I drop in at Mum’s at noon her time on a Sunday, and we listen (via her radio and our respective iPads), to her favourite programme on Radio 3, Private Passions. Each week presenter (and composer) Michael Berkeley explores the musical passions and lives of his guests. Sometimes we’re riveted by the subject and their musical choices, other times we drift off into chit chat, easy kitchen table tittle-tattle.  Quite often, Mum gives me an update on the birds on her birdfeeder, the state of her garden, what she is having for lunch or who has just walked past the window. It’s as if I am there in the room with her, and we treasure these special interactions.

Tuning into Private Passions with Mum

I’ve also had regular Brit Fixes thanks to plugging into BBC Sounds and listening to abridged versions of classic favourites such as Middlemarch – how did Dorothea stick it out with the GHASTLY Rev. Edward Casaubon? – Desert Island Discs, a Victoria Wood retrospective and, just recently, a reading of a beautifully nostalgic and touching story, written in 1931, of a family on their annual holiday to the seaside. There’s something wondrous about my physical self strolling along banksia- and wattle-fringed coastal paths with my dog Bertie, my headspace transported to Bognor Regis on Britain’s South-East coast, following the Stevens family strolling along the Promenade. Escaping the humdrum of everyday life, excitements back then included freedom from wearing ties, tight collars and stockings, and securing a bathing box with a balcony!

Other wonderful Brit Fix moments have included TV programme Secrets of the Museum – a behind the scenes tour of London’s V & A – looking at the extraordinarily detailed and delicate work of the curators and conservators. What joy to sit on my sofa, getting up close and personal with exquisite treasures, without the slow shoe shuffle past glass display cases, peering in at the small font captions. Another highlight was an episode of Rob Bell’s Walking the Lost Railways of Britain which took in the now disused railway station in Great Longstone, the Derbyshire village where my mother was born in 1931.

So far, so good. But as the months rolled on, I realised, with great sadness and a very heavy heart, that I was going to miss my niece Annabel’s wedding in July this year (it had already been postponed from July 2020) and Mum’s 90th in mid-September.

Once again, technology came to the rescue. My sister’s friend John gave me the most splendid (and I use that very British word deliberately) guided tour of Annabel and Jonny’s wedding in South London. We kicked off early and I had a bird’s eye view of the cake, the flowers, the cheeky bridesmaids and the page boys scampering about, the latter my nearly 2-year-old great-nephew twins, like little princes in their red shorts, white shirts and tartan bow ties.  I was there ‘live’ for the service, witnessed the exchange of vows, my niece radiantly happy and elegant, and Jonny resplendent in his kilt, cape and full tartan regalia, both brimming over with love. As they filed out, I had a quick chat with the just-married couple (making me the first person to address them as Mr and Mrs) and then stayed online while they were strewn with rose petal confetti, posed for photographs and then mixed and mingled. I had chats with many of the guests – from friends to family – until it got to 1am here and I had to remind them I was in my PJs and ready for bed!

And then, the weekend before last, my brother Tim and I video-called into Mum’s 90th birthday celebrations – in fact, it was a four generation, three-country call from Mum’s breakfast table in Nottinghamshire to Tim and me tuning in from Melbourne, and my niece Georgie and the twins (the page boys) in suburban Paris! On the first call we watched Mum – in the swing and bright as a button from the get-go – open some of her cards and presents.

Four Way International Call

We tuned in again closer to her lunchtime party. This time, the newly-married Annabel, now Mrs Recaldin, was emcee. As bubbles and copious canapes were served, Annabel waltzed us around pointing out Mum’s many cards (35 and counting), the birthday banners and balloons and the assembled guests.  “Which of the grey-haired old dears do you mean?’ enquired Annabel as I asked to speak to some of Mum’s friends, “there are a few in the room!”

My brother, Charlie, toasted Mum with some heartfelt and touching words, acknowledging, too, the extraordinary kindness of her neighbours, George and Annette, who have been her rock and strength throughout the pandemic. “I’ve made it to 90,” replied Mum triumphantly, “and it doesn’t feel so bad!” Then, after thanking friends, family and neighbours for celebrating with her, she added: “I know I can be difficult sometimes…”  Thank Goodness for gin, piped up Charlie.

  • Chocolate Biscuit Cake strewn with petals from one of Mum’s favourite roses, Darcey Bussell

Having felt weepy on and off all weekend about missing Mum’s party, I went to bed with my heart aglow. I felt the love through the screen and across the divide, and was thrilled to see Mum, the belle of the ball, in her green linen dress and pearls. The word splendid comes to mind again. And next year I’ll be able to visit in person, catch up on hugs, lots of them, and kitchen table chat.

Now is the time

How heart-shakingly moving was Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb which she read at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration. For me, it summed up so powerfully and with such grace and eloquence the choices that stand before us in the COVID era. While she was speaking of America, and against the background of the storming of the Capitol on 6th January, her wise words apply to all of us wherever we live. What also stood out for me – and gave me hope – was that Biden is a man of soul, of the heart, capable of compassion and empathy; the polar opposite to the morally-corrupt, orange-faced ego-maniac Reality TV business tycoon who previously held office. I won’t even mention his name.

It’s ironic in some ways that we mourn the pre-COVID world. So much of that world was already broken and unsustainable; the pandemic has magnified the challenges we face with global warming, food (in)security, factory farming, inadequate systems to deal with the rising mountains of waste, inequity on so many levels (the politics of vaccine distribution to developing nations just one example) and power-hungry corporations putting profit before people and planet.

And then the senseless destruction of forests in so many parts of the world. Since 2016 one football pitch of forest is lost every second. Not only are trees vital sinks for carbon, but emerging science indicates that trees are social creatures that communicate and support each other via an interconnected fungal highway. Who hasn’t experienced a sense of soul amid towering trees in a forest cathedral? I read an article in The Melbourne Age this weekend instancing how a tree on the brink of death bequeaths a substantial share of its carbon to its neighbours. How magnificent is that?

One of the benefits – if we can call it that – of COVID restrictions putting the brakes on ‘normal’ life (and my heart goes out to all those in the UK and other parts of the world faced with wide-scale community transmission, over-whelmed hospitals and high death rates, particularly those who don’t have the economic or social luxury of being able to socially-isolate) – is time to reflect, to slow down, to live more simply, to look out for our neighbours – get to know our neighbours even – to appreciate the small things, and importantly, to revere the natural world that sustains us. And I say revere deliberately.

In a pre-COVID post in February 2020, I wrote that Planet/Mother Earth can do without us and will cast us aside if we don’t look care for her. Recently I watched David Attenborough’s Witness Statement: A Life on Our Planet – on Netflix in which he went through the decades of his life demonstrating humanity’s impact on the planet as measured by population growth and the decline in wild spaces and biodiversity. It’s a compelling call to action. We have overrun the world he says, with nothing to stop us. We are intelligent but not wise, apart from nature, not a part of nature. Since that was filmed, COVID has swept across the world. If COVID doesn’t stop us from plundering the planet, polluting and over-consuming, nothing will. If we fail to clean up our act, more zoonotic viruses are waiting in the wings. Surely, that’s enough of a deterrent?

Now is our chance to change how we live our lives and how we interact with others and our environment, being kinder to ourselves, each other and the planet. Some say we’re doomed – human beings are inherently greedy, corrupt and selfish; history is merely repeating itself. Isn’t that a lazy let-out clause; a way of propping up the status quo?

We mainly read the gloom and doom stuff in the news – and there’s plenty of it – but we hear less about the initiatives to increase sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry, clever waste recycling, renewable energy and rewilding projects or community support schemes (one of my favourites the conversion of a red phone box in an English village into a community food larder). What a lot of schemes lack is the scale and infrastructure to achieve systemic change, but there’s opportunity for that to change. If we care enough and dare enough, we can all be part of that change through the choices, decisions and values we live by.

Tuning into the digital version of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival last August, I was struck by the words of film-maker Damon Gameau and his efforts to humanise climate change through story-telling, and his positivity: “we need to reframe the crisis as an opportunity and privilege to be alive at this time” and “Optimism is the basis of solutions for a sustainable future.” Like many commentators he instanced how major global events in the past brought about advancements, from the social changes triggered by the Black Plague to the creation of the NHS and welfare state in Britain after the Second World War.

Hope, like trees in the forest, nourishes the soul. One of my mother’s favourite phrases is: ‘Hope springs eternal’ (from Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man). Another of her favourites is the poem Leisure by William Henry Davies: “What is this life if, full of care/We have no time to stand and stare.” With life turned upside down and without being able to plan ahead with any certainty, it’s become a bit easier to live more mindfully and in the moment– with more time to stand, stare, smell the roses and meditate. Even a few minutes of micro meditation can take you out of your head and back into your heart.  The trick, I have found, is to cultivate a practice of gratitude and to trust that there is some grand design behind the current global shake-up.


Lockdown gave me the time, space and single-minded focus to build a freelance practice as a grants specialist. And in a pleasantly organic and synchronistic way, organisations and projects that are close to my heart have found me. At the end of last year I supported five arts and entertainment organisations to win Federal Government grants – such a boost for artists whose livelihoods and performance opportunities have been decimated by COVID. Since then, there’s been youth mental health, environmental education and projects to re-purpose food waste. I feel as if I have found my professional feet and carved out my own niche and signature brand.

As a homebody, lockdown was less challenging for me than some. And that’s where the gratitude came in. Finally, I had time to give my garden more love, and to tackle jobs that had been on my domestic to-do list for years. I didn’t clear out a single cupboard but I did install a Vertical Garden in my courtyard and plant out various cuttings I had collected from friends’ gardens.

I painted my various garage sale and nature strip finds (for non-Australians, this has nothing to do with nudity; the nature strip is the grass verge bordering the pavement where people put out ‘hard rubbish’ to be collected by the Council!). While it’s illegal to pinch things from the hard rubbish, I see it as neighbourhood recycling, and it saves items going to landfill. A win-win. A neighbour, Jill and I, alert each other when we spot see something languishing by the side of the road that is crying out for a good home…

More than ever, I learnt to savour the small things: a cuddle with Bertie, a new green shoot in my garden, the first cup of tea in the morning, cloud formations in the sky, the changing colours of the ocean, the magpies carolling, an engrossing book or fascinating podcast. My home-based staycation over the Christmas holidays was a series of simple savoured moments adding up to quite a feast.

None of us knows what lies ahead. All we can do is to keep caring, keep learning, keep hopeful and keep putting one foot in-front of the other. I’ll leave you with a few lines from Amanda Gorman.

But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with


What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” (Henry David Thoreau)

The other day as I was walking in my local suburb with the dog child, I noticed that yet another house had been bulldozed to the ground to make way for yet another new build. But this was no ordinary house and certainly not a tumbledown. Well-maintained, it was an elegant and gracious Victorian-style home enclosed by a bluestone wall with a polished brass number plate. In fact, it was smart enough to have statues in the garden. Like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl – albeit in a Southern Hemisphere setting – I used to peek through the fence, admiring the porch with the tiled floor, the wrap-around veranda and the ornate cornices on the roof. This is the kind of house I would buy if I won the Lottery, I told myself.

Elegant sash windows

I was aghast seeing it demolished and furious at the waste of materials – those lovely long sash windows – and the senselessness of it.  And this during the summer that Australia has been experiencing the worst bush fire season in its recorded history, with over 2000 homes destroyed. One the hand greedy developers and fickle homeowners and, on the other, individuals and families powerless to save their homes from being razed to the ground by ferocious fires.

Whatever your views about climate change and its impact on our environment, one thing is indisputable. The way we are living on planet Earth is not sustainable. We rape, pillage, plunder, pump out pesticides and plastic, spend, acquire, amass, throw away and then start over again. And we don’t learn from the past or heed the warnings. Think of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring published in 1962, considered to be the book that kick-started the global grassroots environmental movement.

And I’ve just read – and very much enjoyed – John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America. In 1960 Steinbeck set off in a truck converted to a camper van on an epic journey across America with his standard poodle, Charley, a colourful character in his own right.  It’s a wonderful tale full of rich and lyrical observations of the natural world – especially the giant redwoods in southern Oregon, amusing anecdotes about the different states he passes through, and chats over coffee and whisky with a cast of quirky characters he meets on the way. But it’s also deeply reflective and the themes he raises are still relevant today.He laments the amount of waste (including wrecked and rusting cars) in American cities, and the amount of packaging used in every day life: “I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness – chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea.”  He talks of towns encroaching on villages and the countryside, supermarkets edging out ‘cracker-barrel’ stores. “The new American finds his challenge and his love in traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry.” And he encounters political apathy – life seems to revolve more around baseball and hunting than discussions about the respective merits of Kennedy versus Nixon in an election year.  Sound familiar?

Steinbeck died in 1968, just eight years after writing this book, at the age of 66. I wonder what he would have made of the digital era. I suspect he might not have been much of a fan. “No region can hold out for long against the highway, the high-tension line and the national television.” And he rails against trailer homes, a tax efficient form of property ownership with an inbuilt form of one-upmanship as owners constantly upgrade to a better model. Overall, he comes away disenchanted.

“We have in the past been forced into reluctant change by weather, calamity, and plague. Now the pressure comes from our biologic success as a species. We have overcome all enemies but ourselves.”

How prescient, and how uncomfortable, especially given the recent outbreak of Coronavirus. Let’s face it, humans are the problem. Planet Earth can do without us, and most likely will cast us aside – as insignificant specks of dust – unless we learn to live in harmony with the ecosystems that support all life, giving us clean soils, air and water.

Rather than getting depressed and defeated, however, it’s vital that we use the current level of global discontent to campaign and advocate for change to policies and practices that reduce emissions and promote sustainability. And as we do that, let’s not lose sight of the many positive initiatives being undertaken by changemakers, entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists to tackle social and environmental challenges.  It’s not all bad: just this week I read that one of Britain’s largest builders, Bovis Homes, is incorporating “hedgehog highways’ into existing and future housing – hedgehogs walk more than a mile each night foraging for food, but numbers have dropped significantly due to habitat loss and pesticide use. A nice win for biodiversity!

For the love of reading

I’ve taken a bit of a break from my blog for various reasons, one being that I’ve always been a bit iffy about social media, not only the public nature of it, but the busy-ness and noisiness of it, the fact it never sleeps but churns on and on keeping us in thinking and doing mode, and over-stimulated. Not to mention fake news, ‘deepfake’ videos, trolling, interference in elections and data mining.  I tune out of the whole circus more often than not, leaving those pages to scroll on without me.

Given my ambivalence around 24/7 digital connectedness I was interested to read that author Patrick deWitt screens out the world while writing: “Wi-Fi feels like the death of solitude, of solitary thought. It feels like you’re in a room with people all the time. And I think if you’re going to write, you should have some quality time to yourself, daily.”

So the return to my blog is on my terms – I may not get round to reading many other blogs and posting likes and comments. And for now, my aim is not to boost my ‘traffic’ or attempt to generate income. I invite those that enjoy it to read it at their leisure. And I will write it as and when, perhaps in a more flow-y way.

One consistent anchor and pleasure throughout 2019 – when I took a chunk of time out from career and work to spend extended time with my family, particularly my elderly mother, and friends in the UK – was the luxury of having more time to read. Reading is a gentle, quiet pleasure that engages our heart, mind and imagination in a way no other medium does. Even if we choose to listen to an audio book, it’s less demanding than a Podcast or other streaming service.

I enjoyed resisting the pull of FOMO-tinged new releases and got down to some  classics. As a German language graduate, I was thrilled to finally read Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks – albeit in translation. Written in 1901 but set in the mid to late 1800s, it’s about four generations of a wealthy north German merchant family, and their eventual decline amid a changing world. It explores tensions between head and heart, business versus the arts, old and new, with exquisitely drawn characters reminding me of Dickens. When it came to George Eliot’s Middlemarch, described by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as ‘the greatest novel in the English language, I cheated and listened to a wonderful dramatized adaption on BBC Radio 4. It proved the perfect bedtime accompaniment when I returned from my second UK trip at the end of the year when I was still suspended between worlds, half of me still in Mum’s kitchen, and half of me back here in Melbourne. What a relief when the caustic Reverend Edward Casaubon dies!

A few literary memoirs provided fascinating insights into how writers choose their subjects and the kind of world they inhabit. The best was Claire Tomalin’s A life of My Own. She has written outstanding biographies of subjects as varied as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy but is very sparing in the details of her own day to day life, exercises self-restraint around her emotional life and lacks self-pity. I found that so refreshing in the me-me-me era. The daughter of a French intellectual and a musical mother, her first husband, a journalist, is killed by a Syrian missile in Israel, one of her daughters, Susanna, a brilliantly gifted girl, commits suicide, and her son, Tom, is born with spina bifida. What she does describe are her dealings with the literary great and the good – including an affair with Martin Amis – and her work as literary editor of the New Statesman and The Sunday Times.

Another non-fiction highlight was historian Annabel Venning’s At War with the Walkers, an enthralling account of her family’s experience of World War II. Meticulously researched, it’s the saga of her grandfather Walter and his five siblings: Harold was a surgeon in London and his sister Ruth a nurse when the Blitz started; Peter is captured in the fall of Singapore, Edward fights the Germans in Italy, Bee marries an American airman and Walter battles the Japanese in Burma. I learnt so much, not just about the war (particularly in the Far East) but the rich social detail from the  escalating price of horses in 1939  due to petrol rationing to the extraordinarily rigid social hierarchy in the Indian Army: “Even if only one officer was dining in the mess at night, the regimental brass band had to turn out and play while the solitary diner had to wear full military regalia and observe all the mess customs…”

It’s many years since I read a Daphne du Maurier. The Parasites written in 1949 about three half siblings and their theatrical parents is as relevant as a study of human nature as it was then. Julie Myerson, in her 2005 introduction, sums it up brilliantly as: “a strange ambiguous love story set in a world of dark, Lutyens house, Morny soap (I remember that brand so well, French Fern and Lavender etc!) and brittle, fading theatrical glamour.”

My most recent read was SNAP by crime fiction author Belinda Bauer, a Christmas present from my dear friend Monica. Not my usual choice of genre, I loved this romp of a thriller set in Devon. It starts on the M5 when a mother of three children leaves them in the car on the hard shoulder while she goes to the emergency phone to report a breakdown. She never returns… Curmudgeonly detectives, eccentric neighbours and characters living in the shadows made this a perfect bit of escapism.

I can’t finish without including another treasured Christmas present: The Artful Dog – Canines from the Metropolitan Museum of Art – and one of my favourite quotes: Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” Groucho Marx.

 

London: Hamming it up in…Ham

My ankle now healing I am now more mobile if not entirely comfortable, and more or less beyond the RICE (Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate) period – at least the ICE bit, not that I could follow that neat little anagram on my travels in France; I’d have needed a lackey to fetch me cold packs or to carry me around in a sedan chair!

So it made me smile when I met up with my oldest and dearest friend Monica last week and saw she was also sporting a bandage around her ankle. She has a bit of a history with ankles – I once pushed her around the Royal Academy in a wheelchair – and this time she’s broken a bone and so her foot is (as one of my nieces would say) well puffy. Puts mine in the shade in fact. Suffice it to say, however, that we were as one moving at the same non-brisk pace, every now and then having a stork-like rest on one foot.

We started our day out at Petersham Nurseries near Richmond in London, an upmarket (shorthand for pricey), artsy, vintage-y nursery surrounded by grassy meadows along the Thames. We had lots to talk about over our artisan tea in the café, the walls framed by cascades of fuchsia-coloured bougainvillea in full bloom.

From there it was a short hop to Ham House, a Jacobean mansion gifted to courtier William Murray by Charles I. Educated with the King, Murray was a ‘whipping boy’ and took the lashings for any of the king’s behavioural transgressions – it was meant to serve by example. Talk about a scapegoat. The least the King could do, later in life, was to make Murray one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber and reward him with a sumptuous mansion!

Before visiting the house, we had lunch in the Orangery café situated in the walled kitchen garden, a riot of colour and lushness with purple lavender borders contrasting with the orange nasturtiums and yellow sunflowers. Ham House was considered one of the grandest in Stuart England, and is now hailed as ‘the most complete survival of 17th century fashion and power’. Not only that, it’s reputed to be one of the most haunted too. I was disappointed not to see an aristocratic spectre or even an ectoplasmic footman!

Ascending the intricately carved wooden staircase you come to a series of rooms including the Long Gallery lined with aristocratic portraits including one by Van Dyck of Charles I, a library with a screen made of a double-sided map dated 1743 in which Australia and New Zealand are drawn as one landmass, and my favourite, The Green Cabinet Room, with walls covered in green damask and hung with small paintings and miniatures, one of Elizabeth I dated 1590. Another portrait of note was of Erasmus (school of Holbein) with an intricate frame carved by Grinling Gibbons.

Monica and her husband Jonathan (we met at university) live nearby, and to my delight, Jonathan joined us unexpectedly. By 3.30 pm a volunteer guide started to close the blinds and to shut up the house to protect the paintings – interestingly, the Green Chamber was designed with a curtain rail and protective silk curtains, now restored by the National Trust. Like kids running away from the Bogey Man, we rushed to stay one step ahead.  That was all we needed to revert to our long-standing default of hamming it up – silly faces, voices and giggling – as we sped-read the information cards in each room, here a Japanese lacquer cabinet, there an exquisite monogrammed parquetry floor, here a leather stamped wall, there a bedchamber decorated in honour of Charles I’s wife, Catherine of Braganza. By the time we got below stairs to the servants’ quarters – complete with the Duchess’s bathing room with its round wooden bathtub – we were off the hook. Phew. That’s what I love about old friends; you simply pick up where you left off.

Our final stop was The Still, perfumed with dried lavender and other herbs, the shelves lined with ointments for gout containing pig fat and a bottle of dew harvested in spring this year. In bygone eras, May dew was considered a cure-all and beauty treatment for women, and for men, washing their hands in dew was said to strengthen their skills in knots, locks and net-mending.

I looked up the origin of the word hamming it up as I thought it might be Shakespearean but my research indicates that it means “overacting inferior performer,” dates from America, circa 1882,  and refers to ham fat used to remove stage make-up. Who knew!

But I did get a double Shakespeare fix, once in the British Library, repository of the Shakespeare’s First Folio dated 1623, and then at an open- air production of Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regents Park with my sister and brother-in-law. Booking an al fresco event in England is always a gamble but we hit the heatwave week, perfect for a sumptuous picnic accompanied by a fine English rosé wine, and then watching the play with the setting sun as a backdrop. What a treat to see mischievous Puck, Titania in her fairy bower and the elves on a stage fringed with reeds and surrounded by oak trees. And one of my favourite lines spoken by Helen to Demetrius (who scorns her): “And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel.” Seems spaniels have a long history of being faithful and adoring!

Today my niece and I are off to see a wartime comedy by Terrence Rattigan at Richmond’s Orange Theatre, a theatre in the round. Heatwave permitting, we also plan to do a guided tour of Sandycombe Lodge, one of the houses designed and built by J. M.W. Turner in Twickenham, amid the Thames-side landscape that inspired him.  My long-cherished plan of making the most of my self-awarded time-out in the European summer is going to plan!

Adventures of a solo traveller: crossing Paris on one foot

I’m 50-something and have never been in ambulance – until last week that is.  And while I was no flashing light casualty – thank Goodness – it was a new adventure.  After five blissful days of reading, swimming and walking (oh yes, and eating very well) with my brother and his wife in Provence, I was on day two of a side trip to Avignon. And, for once, I hadn’t planned anything in advance but knew I wanted to make the most of the Festival.  The Avignon Festival is a huge two-week theatre festival originally founded in 1947. Running alongside the official ‘In’ Festival is the ‘Off’ Festival, offering hundreds of shows across theatre, dance, visual arts and music in multiple venues across the city.

Palais des Papes, Avignon

I was coming out of a performance of Molière’s L’Ecole des Femmes – in French no less – when I tripped on a step, caught my foot and wrenched my ankle back. Who knew it could be so excruciatingly painful, making me nauseous and dizzy? I tried not to f ‘n’ blind too loudly as I drew quite a crowd and the Red Cross volunteers came zipping over on their bikes.

Tearing those ligaments was more painful than breaking my wrist so I was very happy to discover that I hadn’t broken any bones when I was X-rayed in hospital. And on the plus side I’d basically got a free bone density test. Having spent all night in the Emergency Department of a French hospital with a family member last year, I knew what to expect: a long wait, some interesting characters – this time a woman delivering a three-hour monologue – and staff stretched to the limit. I felt hugely grateful to be otherwise well and able-bodied and not stuck in hospital in a war zone. And my sympathies were with the staff who were wearing T-shirts advertising they were on strike, no doubt for much-needed improved pay and conditions.

I was hungry when I got back in the taxi at 9.30 p.m. that night – lunch had been a bit of fruit and a biscuit on the run after doing a tour of the Palais des Papes.  One drawback to my Airbnb accommodation, just outside the city walls, was that it didn’t have a kitchen and was not well served by cafés and shops. I limped along until I found a shop with inviting pictures of avocados and tomatoes in the window, but when I got inside there were only dried goods, carbonated drinks, laundry powder, toiletries and ice creams. Channelling my inner Girl Scout, I bought a tin of tuna and four ice lollies in lieu of a bag of frozen peas to ice my ankle. It had to be that or the chicken nuggets. The only thing about ice lollies is that they melt quite quickly especially when stuck down one’s sock. Never mind, I put the remaining two in the mini bar fridge for the morning.

I lay awake with a throbbing foot that first night worrying how I would manage the train journey – in 31 hours’ time – from Avignon to Paris and Paris to London, what with my luggage, the long platforms and crossing Paris. I decided to start the day by icing my foot only to find the ice lollies had dissolved to a sticky orange puddle in the very un-cold fridge. Do minibar fridges ever work?!

lollies down my sock
Watching Offenbach

Getting to the pharmacy was a bit laboured – while it seemed miles with a swollen and bruised foot, it wasn’t far enough to warrant a taxi or Uber. I stocked with an ankle support, arnica pills, painkillers and une canne anglaise (how interesting that crutches are called English canes!), the idea being that, when travelling, I could use one crutch to take the weight off my bad foot leaving one hand free to wheel my case. At least that’s what the travel insurance suggested when I had called at 3 a.m. to register my claim.

Then rather than sit in my room and fuss and fret, I asked my Airbnb host to give me a lift to the busy Place des Corps Saints as it would give me a choice of cafes and three theatres. And what a perfect place to hang out! Buzzing with life, people and performers plugging their shows either with flyers or bursts of song, trumpet notes, dances or outrageous costumes, it was one long spectacle. I treated myself to a hearty lunch (the highlight being the lavender-infused goats cheese panna cotta) in one café and then moved to a 1950s style bar for a cup of tea. That afternoon I went to see (foot conveniently propped up) an hour-long Offenbach ‘opera bouffe’– the Ile de Tulipan – a one-act comic operetta with some great duets that explores idea of gender, gender muddles and even the idea of same sex marriage. After a spell in another café, a pack of ice on my foot, I managed to get myself to one more show right around the corner from my accommodation. Il Nouvo Barbiere was full of farce, acrobatics and fun performed by some zany Italians – set, as the name suggests, in a barber shop. Perfect.

Goats Cheese Panna Cotta
1950s-style cafe

I didn’t manage to pre-book assisted travel for my return journey to London but, channelling my friend and erstwhile colleague Heather Ellis (see previous blog: https://wp.me/p3IScw-t0) who travelled solo by motorbike across Africa and the Silk Road, I decided to trust it would all work out, canne anglaise at the ready. And sure enough, the girl next to me on the platform in Avignon had only a small rucksack and offered to help with my case all the way through Paris and to Eurostar as she was also travelling through to the Gare du Nord.  What an angel. I was exhausted and sore on arrival in London but happy to have arrived back in one piece ready for a big family reunion weekend.  Avignon had worked out­ just a bit differently than envisaged: I’d seen some of the sites, had some interesting chats, seen five shows – each one un bon spectacle indeed – and had a free ride to hospital.