Three Days in Llangollen, North Wales

My son and his wife rented a cottage just outside Llangollen in North Wales, close to Wrexham where her family live, for the half term week. It was the second time I’ve been up this year and it was lovely to be invited to go up with them again and spend a few days with […]

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Return to Masaniello

  You’ve already written about Masaniello on the blog, Freddie said, as we came out of the restaurant last night and I stopped to take a photo of the front. Yes, I agreed, but not for a while. And a favourite restaurant deserves to be regularly celebrated. And there were some new things last night. […]

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Cookbooks & Recipes That Stand the Test of Time

It was my son Jonathan’s birthday yesterday and I was cooking – for him, his wife Lyndsey, the three boys (5, 8 and 11) and Lyndsey’s mum Julie, who is down from Wales for a week. Seven of us. When I asked Jonathan what he’d like me to cook, really, it was a foregone conclusion: […]

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Three Nights in Brittany: Part Two – Dinan

I’ve just had a lovely short break in Brittany with my daughter Nicola and grandson Rufus (see part one). After leaving a wet St Malo after lunch on the first day, we were pleased to find the weather brightening and sun forecast for our first evening in Dinan. We’d chosen Dinan as our base for […]

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Lunch at Comptoir Libanais, Kingston, With the Grandsons

I always love to have an outing with the boys (now 5, 8 and 11) at holiday time. The family have been coming and going on different trips since school broke for the summer holidays and I took my chance at having the boys today. But where to go and what to do? As we […]

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Art & Food: They Can’t Keep Me Away …

It was a fairly last-minute arrangement for me to meet friends Lucia and David at the highly acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac at the Noel Coward Theatre in London’s St Martin’s Lane. As they weren’t able to meet for a meal beforehand I decided to eat at that old favourite of […]

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A Weekend in Kent, July 2026

It had been a while since I’d seen my aunt Arleen (who is so close in age she’s a friend really) so I was excited to be making the trip to Kent again on Friday. Kent is where I grew up and much of my family still live there. Arleen lives in Birchington by the […]

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Art & Food: An Artist Interviewed & Pasta

I used to go to a lot of events at London galleries where artists, art historians and art critics talked about their work. There have not been so many of these in recent years so I was particularly excited by the National Gallery’s new series: Picture This, in which broadcaster John Wilson is in conversation […]

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A Week in North Wales

Wrexham My son’s wife comes from Wrexham in North Wales and when they booked a farmhouse for a week so they could go up and visit her family, they invited me to join them. I was delighted to have a relaxing week with the family, enjoyed seeing the Welsh family, and the countryside around Wrexham […]

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Restaurant Review: Shiuli, Twickenham

I’ve been hearing good reports of Shiuli for ages. It opened in December 2021 and is just a 5-minute walk from my house; I pass it whenever I go to the bus stop. However, it wasn’t until last night that I finally ate there. To be fair to myself, for a long time I didn’t […]

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