It may have passed you by that last week was the 50th Anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. On 25 April 1974, suddenly and almost bloodlessly, the Estado Novo, a fascist dictatorship that had endured for 48 years, came to an end. I was a first-year student at The Queen's College Oxford at that time: the…
We had visited India twice before (once to Delhi-Jaipur-Agra-Varanassi, and once to Tamil Nadu and Kerala) but never previously considered going for winter sun and a swim in the sea. It is a lot further than the Canary Islands. Nine hours to Mumbai, then a frenzied change of plane for the short hop to Goa…
Fancy a foreign break? Who can blame us really when it is so wet and cold in Blighty. Just when you think things might be improving, a hailstorm crashes down. Merry month of May? If you want to get away, there are currently very few Government-approved destinations. There’s Australia and New Zealand (who clearly don’t…
Here's a middle-class, 21st-century question. Where do you get your olive oil from? I am more than old enough to remember when the answer was almost invariably "Boot's". Olive oil in tiny Crosse & Blackwell bottles were sold in pharmacies for unblocking your ears. That was the only place I encountered olive oil until I…
Since I last posted I’ve been busy. Not full-on busy... but it’s hard to know what others are doing - aside from The Wife, who’s been slogging away, non-stop. Meeting after online meeting, all day long. She gets up early to get some actual work done. So I ought to do my bit. But I…
I was all ready to start at Queen's College to read Modern Languages. The only problem was, I wasn't. I was to be billeted in the famous Florey Building Wasn't at all ready, that is. I'd done Spanish at A Level, but I needed a second tongue to go with it. I could not bear…
“What popular song includes in its lyric: losing my hair, Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine, 64 and Wight?” If you don’t know, there’s really no hope for you. That day, for me, has finally dawned. The Fab Four Once you're south of 21 it becomes difficult to distinguish one birthday from the next unless…
One night, at about half past 10, Hilary rang. My landlady had already gone to bed. I kept my voice down but the damage had been done. The following day Mrs H announced that she hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night and she was going to put a lock on the phone. I…
The Wight Stuff 