I read this week that "drivers over 70 face eye tests every three years”. Why “over 70?”, I ask, as a grumpy 70-year-old who has just had to renew his licence. As arbitrary numbers go it's no worse than 65 or 75, but what's the reasoning? The RAC will have a view (supporting its members,…
We were visiting friends on the South Coast when they said “Would you like to see the church at Old Romney?”. I’m always up for viewing a church. Saint Clement’s, Old Romney Derek Jarman is buried in the churchyard of Saint Clement’s but the interior of this ancient church is worth seeing. There is a…
I’ve been thinking about 1982... down Memory Lane, along a tortuous, circuitous, cul-de-sac, but such is the way my mind seems to work. Bruce Taylor has written a biography of my former Spanish professor, Sir Peter Russell, who died in 2006. I’ve just reviewed it for the The Queen’s College website. Sir Peter, his pupil…
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 haven't been annihilated by Russian missiles. The invasion of Ukraine continues, with thousands killed and millions made refugees, but it all seems far away, certainly far enough to be forgotten on a sunny day in May. I have a feeling that British interest in this war is waning, as it becomes almost normal, a…
It is easy to forget that 40 years ago our country (my country, that is) was at war. Very easy for someone of my generation to forget that it happened four decades ago. And even easier for subsequent generations, because there has been little about it in the news. For youngsters who were not even…
Have you ever trapped your finger in a door frame? I hadn't until we were in holiday in Suffolk this August. I don't recommend trying it, because it hurts like hell. And all because I was careless and not looking at what I was doing. I well remember losing a toenail 40 years ago. You…
Antonio Machado (1875-1939) is undoubtedly one of Spain’s greatest poets. Not as famous as his younger, more flamboyant contemporary Federico García Lorca, his work owes less to the startling, often violent, imagery associated with Lorca and more to a calm contemplation of nature that goes back, via Wordsworth, to Virgil, Theocritus. Etc, etc. A crude…
Memories of 1980s Oxford, for the second time this month. In the same week in which I received an invitation to the Osma Centenary Symposium, Andrew informed me that he'd turned up a cassette tape from 1982 while looking (inevitably) for something else. He digitised it and emailed the result to Bernard and me. The…
Symposium, amongst other things, can mean "a one-day conference". Who knew it had to be just for the one day? (Not Plato for sure.) Last week I was invited to a symposium at Oxford. Some time ago I blogged about my trip to Madrid at Easter 1980, when I was 25 years old. This memorable…
The Wight Stuff 