The Round Pond in London’s Kensington Gardens has always been one of my favourite places. When I was small my mum used to time me and my sister as we ran round the pond – one clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. In the autumn, after a circuit of the pond, we’d catch lucky leaves as they […]
Month: September 2010
A windfall…
I used to rent a house in Oxford with an old pear tree in the garden. The tree was tall and planted on uneven ground at the back of a herbaceous border. Picking from the tree was hazardous, involving a ladder, deep breaths and plenty of daring. After a couple of seasons I decided the […]
Black garlic – fashion faux pas or design classic
It amuses me to see fashion stores from Zara to Benetton to Topshop packed with rails of military capes this season. How did the cape survive its first outing, let alone get resurrected? I remember pleading for one as a teenager, along with a pair of white pull-on wet-look knee-length boots. I eventually got the […]
Exercises in Scones
The French poet Raymond Queneau’s sensational literary experiment, Exercises in Style, recounts the same incident 99 ways. He repeats the story endlessly, but in different styles. The narrative goes like this: it’s midday and a man on a crowded No 84 bus accuses another passenger of deliberately trampling his feet. Later he is seen again, […]