We awoke to a dry and cool morning in Vienna following a very wet evening. Lingering over breakfast at a nearby Herr Mann bakery, we nearly missed our train (the wonderful Railjet). Two and a half quiet and comfortable hours later we pulled into Budapest Keleti. Tuesday 4 June Arriving at Budapest Keleti Our first…
"So, how are you?" goes the greeting. Most normal people automatically come back with something like, “Very well, and how are you?” Or, increasingly, “I’m good” - referring, one assumes, not to their moral condition but their physical well-being. But what if we took that question literally? People who know me say that I look…
We marched to Zürich Hbf, in comparatively balmy weather, to catch the 08:57 to Sargans, from where we would pick up the Railjet to Vienna. Saturday 1 June Neither of us had ever been to Vienna, although it had been on our minds for at least 10 years. My knowledge of Germanic culture is patchy…
It is a while since I last blogged. It's not that I've nothing to write about, but that I've been too busy actually doing things. Anne and I have just returned from four weeks travelling through central Europe: eight countries and more than 5,000 km (mostly by train, with a few Flixbuses when necessary). I…
"I am a proud Lancastrian. I hate London", said Madam X recently to a friend of mine. It is the kind of remark you could write a book about, if you were so inclined. What, if any, is the connection between the two statements? Apart from the obvious, what does it signify? If addressed to…
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…
I realise I am not going to get a lot of sympathy, but owning a second home brings a second set of problems. On our visit last month I was relieved to see that the builder had finally repaired the leaking roof of the lean-to, which back in November was causing rainwater to find its…
I knew something was afoot a soon as I picked up the envelope. In the past it has contained a short letter to say that everything was fine - which is what Anne was told the previous week. But this time there was a longer letter with a leaflet all about bowel cancer screening and…
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…
As I have already recounted (at least once) in 1979, on my return to Oxford from London, I accidentally co-founded a band you've never heard of called One for the Wall. We never got a recording contract but it was fun while it lasted. We went our own ways a few years later, but -…
The Wight Stuff 