«Всё уж готово, час ожидания наступает,» as Figaro reflects in the Russian translation I had to get my head around: “Everything’s ready, the hour of expectancy steps on,” which I’ve always thought is a wonderful… 

I’ve been having the jitters these last week couple of weeks. ‘It’s too far’; ‘I’m insufficiently prepared’; and most perplexingly, ‘What am I going to do when I run out of food?’ However, if I’m… 

When I was a small child, I used to derive distinct pleasure by doing the various ‘puzzles’ with which publishers of children’s comics used to fill out the pages of their publications. Among these was… 

One thing I shared with my mother is an affinity with woodland and its flowers. Mum would come alive beneath a canopy of beech or oak leaves; she was a sort of elven creature who… 

How wonderful when things work out just right. I was lucky enough to be able to spend a couple of days at Lulworth Cove last week. The weather was unspeakably good; it was absurdly good;… 

Wood Anemones Still Fabulous The anemones (see my post two weeks ago) are still sublime, and have become a sea of white in the spring sunshine. But the bluebells are on their way. Ineptitude The… 

If anyone actually read my post last week, they would have seen that I rashly wished that I had started my walk on 9th March going south to north. As I turned my head from… 

For anyone unfamiliar with Guestling Woods (see this Google map), as well as being a stunning bluebell woods (for which it is locally famous) it is, more unusually, breath-taking three weeks earlier in the year…