Travel tips-Restaurant reviews-Recipes
It’s almost exactly a year since I last went to Chichester. I know it’s a very English thing to do, but I couldn’t help but compare the weather: the bright, warm sunny days a year ago, and the cold, very windy and wet days on this trip. I thought I’d gone prepared, taking rain gear, […]
Read More
It started with Ben (6) coming back from school a couple of weeks’ ago and wanting to tell me they’d been learning about Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney in school that day. As he started a drawing, reproducing for me the Lichtenstein painting they’d be studying, he recognised ‘The Splash’ on the front of a […]
Read More
I saw Greg Marchand, chef/owner of Frenchie on BBC TV’s Saturday Kitchen last month, in Christmas mode and making a rather wonderful stuffing for chicken. I looked up his restaurant on my iPad and made a note that I must visit sometime. Then serendipity stepped in soon after and in an exchange of emails with […]
Read More
As a child, I was taken to The Nutcracker ballet at Christmas every year. I began ballet lessons at the tender age of three and carried on until I was 15. Of course, as I watched Tchaikovsky’s magical ballet, I wanted, like many other little girls, to be a ballerina … but I was also […]
Read More
I was going to the theatre for the first time in ages, to see The Pillowman at the Duke of York’s Theatre in St Martin’s Lane. Having not long been back from Wales, I was a bit late suggesting to my friend that we met to eat first, and thus my usual haunt for that […]
Read More
I’ve been meaning to go to Coal Drops Yard for ages … well since it opened in October 2018 and people started talking about it being a great foodie destination. So when good friends Annie & Jerry suggested meeting there to eat at Barrafina, I was delighted. At last, I was going to make it […]
Read More
My lovely friend Lucia emailed to say she and her husband David had booked entry to the National Gallery – which is open late on Fridays – to see The Ugly Duchess exhibition and were then eating at Bancone after. Did I want to join them? I most certainly did! We were meeting at 7pm […]
Read More
Well how could I resist an invitation to join The Trouble Club? One look at their exciting schedule of events and I was hooked – before I’d even stepped through their doors. The Trouble Club arranges talks and dinners ‘where you can hear some of the finest voices talking on everything from politics to fiction’. […]
Read More
It had been a long time since I was last at Bancone. Well, pre-pandemic. After my first visit in August 2018 (click here), it became a favourite haunt where I ate many times and took friends and family along to enjoy too. Would it be the same? Would I still rate it as one of […]
Read More
It’s always lovely to go up to Worcestershire for the weekend to visit my daughter. I go from busy city living to a weekend in a 16th century farmhouse surrounded by fields and beautiful views. And, most importantly, I get to spend some time with my lovely daughter, her wife, and my 4-year-old grandson. It […]
Read More