It was jolly cold this morning, but I soon warmed up and managed to get round a quite jolly course in well under an hour. The route took us round the edge of Hyde Park and then twice round Kensington Gardens before returning back to the Boathouse on the Serpentine.
I no longer actively work with a Section, I do other things as a Scout volunteer, but I was a leader in UK Scouting throughout the 80s and 90s, when being gay in Scouting wasn’t something you admitted to. Indeed, the institutional homophobia at the time was palpable. Since then, things have changed for LGBTQI+…
I have meetings in New York this week. I love New York. Well, I love Manhattan. If truth be told, apart from the odd foray into Brooklyn for pizza or a visit to a school, my knoweldge of NYC is limited to the island – and even then, only the blocks south of Central Park….
Today, 8 August, is International Cat Day. Which seems as good an excuse as any to write about Blenheim. Not that I generally need much of an excuse. Living with Blenheim is one of the great joys of my life, but it is also a useful daily reminder that loving an animal and understanding an…
Absolutely! Here’s a longer, more thematically structured blog post with global flavour, references to cultural diversity, and your signature tone – warm, engaging, self-deprecating, and gently humorous: A little while ago, in a moment of mild hunger and major nostalgia, I turned to the oracle of our age – Facebook – and asked a question:…
I’m writing this sitting in the departure satellite at Geneva airport. It’s nearly quarter to eleven at night and my flight back home was meant to leave at seven. The executive lounge kicked us out half an hour ago and those of us bound for London are now the only passengers left in the airport….
Gosh, it was hot in London this afternoon. But, so far, we haven’t seen the temperatures and drought of the summer of 1976. In 1976, there were 15 consecutive days when temperatures reached 32C (89.6F) or higher somewhere in the UK, according to the Met Office. We haven’t managed that yet. As I sat in St…
