In Greece, you often see men sitting over a coffee or an ouzo, fiddling with their Komboloi (worry beads). It seems an exclusively male pursuit, as I have never seen a woman even sitting in a cafe, let alone playing with worry beads – but perhaps local women sit at home and worry instead? It [...]
When did you last have the opportunity to run the 100m in one of the original Greek stadia dating back to 300 BC, your name being announced as you emerge, blinking and barefoot, from the dark of an ancient tunnel into the bright sunshine of the stadium, having just changed into a white tunic in the [...]
Helena and I have started our training regime for the one-day, 26-mile London Stadia Trekathon, taking in the sites of the 2012 Olympics, that the two of us are undertaking on 13 May. We are treating it seriously – investing in incredibly comfortable (but not at all stylish) footwear and a pedometer, and setting off [...]
Fine white-sand beaches. Clear warm water. Tropical fish. These were all things I had expected on a recent trip to Mauritius. The dodo, however, was not on the list. Thinking about it now, of course I knew the dodo was Mauritian but, before I arrived, I hadn’t put two and two together – and therefore [...]
Five best girlfriends, an introduction to red kites and a boutique hotel in the bucolic Chilterns. What more could you want for a good old weekend away?! We arrived in our gladrags to a puzzled reception. ”Are you the walking group?” enquired the hotel manager, sounding sceptical. “Hmm – well, we’ve booked a short-break package that [...]
If the home of an Englishman is his castle, then New Zealanders must have far less grand aspirations. Having been born and raised in Bath – a city built for show, with houses to match – the pastel-coloured, one-storey wooden structures that made up every small town and village I drove through on a recent [...]
In a new social-media initiative, we have collated the digital results of a recent visit by Sue, Anthony and Mika to the Costa Alentejana, in the unexplored Portuguese region of Alentejo, using Storify. Storify is a clever new platform which allows users to spin narratives or plot timelines by curating tweets, Facebook updates and pictures, [...]
Some say Prague is the most haunted city in Europe. Our Account Manager, Steph Reed, certainly thinks so. On a recent solo trip to Prague, as the night sky arrived and the winter chill started to hurt my face, I was encouraged to head indoors to a cosy museum. As I went on a museum [...]
Take a listen to this interview with Noam Greenberg, Artistic Director of Music at Tresanton, on Radio 3′s In Tune programme.
So, at the age of 37 and unmarried, I found myself committing to be a bridesmaid to my god-daughter. No, my god-daughter was not a child bride, she was 27; she asked me to be her god-mother when she was 17. Ten years on, perhaps I had fallen short of being a dutiful god-mother (what [...]