A week has passed since I last posted here. If I've remained silent that long it's not because nothing has happened, but because many things have, which tessellated so efficiently as to leave few crevices of time in which to write them up ( Read more... )

Drama is conflict, so the saying goes; by the same token, intellectual argument is powered by misunderstanding - one of Earth's few truly renewable resources ( Read more... )

First things first, yes of course it's an attempted coup, and has been for some time. The era of British sakoku may be about to begin ( Read more... )

When I lived in York in the 1980s it was already very much a tourist city, especially in summer, and perhaps the most tourist-thronged street was The Shambles, with its picturesquely overhanging gables that (so I was always told) had shaded the meat in hot weather in the days before refrigeration. For The Shambles was traditionally a street of ( Read more... )

Oh say, have you seen the model village at Bourton-on-the-Water? It was built in the mid-1930s by a local publican and recreates the village as it was at the time in Cotswold stone, at a scale of 1:9.


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"Of course, now I want to pop over to Cirencester (it’s only 40 minutes in the car) and pose like Alice and Shino. If only I knew someone who’d be willing to be my accomplice in so silly a mission."

I wrote those prophetic words in a post from May 2015, having only recently discovered that one of the settings of Kiniro Mosaic was Cirencester High ( Read more... )

What is the most beautiful village in England ( Read more... )

Two days ago I visited Lacock, about half an hour from here, hoping to waylay some Japanese tourists and ask them their impressions. I failed utterly, because I went in the morning, and they come in the afternoon - mostly. But I did talk to lots of shopkeepers, etc ( Read more... )

There are few things more depressing than writing up a blog of one's exciting adventure abroad after one returns, jetlagged and deflated, to one's own home and pile of utility bills. Therefore I do not propose to put myself through that, but will post the last substantive account of my Japan adventure this very day, prior to my return on Monday ( Read more... )

I spent five days in Odawara (or rather in the suburb of Tomizu), and I don't propose to anatomise them here, partly because I've fallen lamentably behind in this account, and partly because some were spent in such unphotogenic pursuits as writing. However, those were punctuated by some interesting expeditions, and I'll try to give you a flavour of ( Read more... )