Travel tips-Restaurant reviews-Recipes
Malaga is a great choice for a short break early in the year as it’s one of the warmest places in mainland Europe in the winter/spring time. Last time I was there in January 2020 the weather was lovely and sunny – though with some rain – and temperatures in the late teens, but I […]
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This is the kind of post that usually gets published around new year, looking back on the best of the previous year. However, I had a busy start to 2025 – family and work – and so a look back on 2024 passed me by. Now spring is on our doorstep (not officially with us […]
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I was lucky with the weather again. Just as the sun shone – albeit on still an icy cold winter’s day – when I headed into central London for The Nutcracker last week, the almost constant grey skies parted yesterday to reveal another gloriously blue sky for my trip to London’s Fitzrovia. My friend Sharon […]
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After lots of damp and foggy weather over the Christmas period, it was lovely to wake to a bright, sunny day yesterday. I had tickets to take grandsons Freddie (9) and Ben (7) to The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum. I took Freddie last January but Ben would join us this year. (There’s a minimum […]
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‘A wonder to behold’ Telegraph ‘A joyful, bravura piece of stagecraft’ London Evening Standard ‘A magical revival’ The Times ******** My eldest grandson Freddie (9) is showing an interest in theatre, which is wonderful, and a few weeks’ ago I promised to find out what was on at […]
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It’s a first for me to review a book I’ve worked on professionally as an editor. However, copy-editing Lady Glenconner’s Picnic Papers was such a delight, I couldn’t resist sharing it with you – especially as there is, of course, a lot about food in this book. A book about picnics has to include food: […]
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We were running out of chutney. The Green Tomato Chutney I made in September was almost gone. Although I shared Katie Stewart’s advice to wait a month before eating the chutney to allow it to mature, the family barely managed a week. Grandsons Freddie (9) and Ben (6), who’d initially been sceptical that anything made […]
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I’m just back from visiting my daughter for a couple of days. She lives in Worcestershire, about a 20-minute drive from the county’s capital, Worcester. We’ve never been into the city itself much in the years she’s lived there, but now 6-year-old grandson Rufus attends one of the Pauline Quirke Academies for a drama class […]
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It had been a long time. I could hardly believe when I checked the date of my first visit to The Palomar on the blog that it had been in December 2014. I went a second time a couple of years later with friends and have always meant to go back. But it didn’t seem […]
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It’s not been a great summer here in London and already, although autumn doesn’t officially begin until the 22nd, autumnal weather has arrived; conkers fall to the ground from the huge horse chestnut trees on Twickenham Green, and the days are closing in. There’s been a lot of rain and cool temperatures all through ‘summer’. […]
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