On the back of an envelope…
When I was about fifteen – living in Somerset – I discovered penfriends. I can’t remember much about any of them and the long distance relationship was generally very short-lived…. Read more »
Category: Nostalgia
Salad Days
Sir John Evelyn, best known for his diary, was also a vegetarian and a fan of salads and would hopefully have approved of the salad pictured above. His 1699 book… Read more »
Ballad of Bethnal Green
‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is’ observed Amanda, a character in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. It’s also extraordinary how a piece of music you haven’t thought about for decades suddenly chirrups back into… Read more »
A Taste of India – possibly
When the first dedicated Indian restaurant – the Hindoostanee – was opened in London in 1809 by an enterprising immigrant called Dean Mahomed, it boasted of “Indian dishes, in the highest… Read more »
I Go – I Come Back!
“I go – I come back” was one of the phrases born out of the whimsically surreal and satirical radio series It’s That Man Again (ITMA) which entertained wartime and… Read more »
Blue is the colour….
David Mitchell commented in the Observer on 1 April 2018: ‘I liked the old passports too, though not primarily because of their colour, but because they were bigger and had a… Read more »