Monthly Archives: September 2017

There are quite a few things that make bug people (and wannabe bug people like me) cross, but one of the things that really riles them is members of the public with no interest in bugs absorbing idiotic and inaccurate … Continued

I’ll tell thee everything I can; There’s little to relate, I saw an aged, aged man, A-sitting on a gate. “Who are you, aged man?” I said. “And how is it you live?” And his answer trickled through my head … Continued

I don’t really have anything much to tell you today, because apart from driving along the Roman road to a routine doctor’s appointment through a thunderstorm, which was quite exciting, I’ve spent virtually the whole day at my desk. I’m … Continued

R and I have been gadding about enjoying ourselves again: we’ve been in Liverpool for the last couple of days – about which more when I sort out the photos and back-blip them – and when we checked out of … Continued

This morning R and I had tickets for the exhibition Alphonse Mucha: In Quest of Beauty at the Walker Art Gallery – seeing this being our main reason for the trip to Liverpool. We’re both big fans of Mucha: R … Continued

Neither R nor I had ever spent more than a couple of hours in Liverpool before travelling here today, but we’ve both fallen for the city in quite a big way. We’re staying at The Nadler, which is one of … Continued

This is The Boston Tea Party in Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s not my absolutely favourite place on the planet, of course: given the chance of being in The Café Museum in Vienna, or Hotel Central or Restaurace Francouzska in Prague, the Met … Continued

Artificial sunshine for a wet day. Sunday afternoon fartnarklery when the light’s bad, the weather’s too poor to go out, and you’ve got the autumn’s-setting-in-now-and-the-insects-are-dying blues. I almost flicked the heating on this morning, then gritted my teeth and put … Continued

This rather stylish chap is Helophilus pendulus, a harmless hoverfly which mimics a wasp. Helophilus means “marsh-lover”, and refers to the fact that the females of this species lay their eggs in marshy ground, or in rotting vegetation around the … Continued

I had a productive morning today, researching and booking a holiday for next year; after that I did some other bits of admin, and then zoomed off to Stratford to do a little emergency wine food shopping at Waitrose. Arriving … Continued