Happy New Year 2026

I'm having a quiet New Year, having been staying in two other people's houses over the festive period up until yesterday. 

Which gives me plenty of time to get this post into shape before I relax with a glass of something celebratory. 

Like this gin, ginger ale and lime juice I had in August

Or this Harvey Wallbanger from January 2025

It's been quite a good year for walks.  

a long trek up the Phoenician steps in Capri

and up Vesuvius

and down the valley and up the other side in Matera

As well as places nearer home like Oxford and Brighton and Sheffield and my ongoing project to complete the Grand Union Canal, and of course London:

Its not been a bad year for books either. I gave C P Snow a whirl for the first and second time, read a Nina Bawden for the first time since I don't know how long (I read a lot of her as a child but never really got into her books for adults), read four books in translation and got seriously stuck into books by Catherine Aird, George Bellairs and of course E C R Lorac

Full list pasted below:

Black Beadle - E C R Lorac

The Affair in Thor's Head - E C R Lorac

The Long Shadow - Celia Fremlin

Army Without Banners - Ann Stafford

The Religious Body - Catherine Aird

The Captain of the Pole Star - Arthur Conan Doyle

Passing Strange - Catherine Aird

Parting Breath - Catherine Aird

Murder as a Fine Art - Carol Carnac

After Effects - Catherine Aird

A Going Concern - Catherine Aird

A Dead Liberty - Catherine Aird

Henrietta Who? - Catherine Aird

A Late Phoenix - Catherine Aird

Wild Chamber - Christopher Fowler

Guilty by Definition - Susie Dent

The Stately Home Murder - Catherine Aird

Some Die Eloquent - Catherine Aird

Talking to my Daughter about the Economy - Yanis Varoufakis

Slight Mourning - Catherine Aird

The Last Devil to Die - Richard Osman

Murder is Easy - Agatha Christie

Deadly Duo - Margery Allingham

We Solve Murders - Richard Osman

City Adrift - Naresh Fernandes

The Point of Distraction - Will Eaves

Scandalise my Name - Fiona Sinclair

Not to be Taken - Anthony Berkeley

Jumping Jenny = Anthony Berkeley

Leaving Beirut - Mai Ghoussoub

Underground, Overground - Andrew Martin

Cat and Mouse - Christianna Brand

Learning to Talk - Hilary Mantel

Ghost Cat - Beverley Butler

The Last Children of Tokyo - Yoko Tawada

Death Under Sail - C P Snow

Duplicate Death - Georgette Heyer

Black Plumes - Margery Allingham

Murder Makes Mistakes - George Bellairs

Death in the Fearful Night - George Bellairs

Death on a Dark Sea - R A Bentley

The House of Silence - E Nesbit

Excellent intentions - Richard Hull

Death of a Tin God - George Bellairs

A Strange Manor of Death - R A Bentley

Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie

What Katy Did Next - Susan Coolidge

Clover - Susan Coolidge

In the High Valley - Susan Coolidge

The Greenwell Mystery - E C R Lorac

The House of Footsteps - Mathew West

Unnatural Causes - Richard Shepherd

Stone and Sky - Ben Aaronovitch

Colonel Marchand - E C R Lorac

The Perfect Alibi - Christopher St John Sprigg

A Flat Place - Noreen Masud

Death in Room Five - George Bellairs

Lonelyheart 4122 - Colin Watson

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

A Legal Fiction - Elizabeth Ferrars

Murder in the Basement - Anthony Berkeley

The Mystery of Henri Pick - David Foenkinos

Death Stops the Frolic - George Bellairs

How to Stop Spending Money Your Don't Have on Clothes You Don't Wear - Jodie Gillarty

How to Save Money - Ann Russell

How to Clean Everything - Ann Russell

The Library of Unrequited Love - Sophie Divry

Hybrid Humans - Harry Parker

W is for Wasted - Sue Grafton

Smoke Without Fire - E X Ferrars

Insomniac City - Bill Hayes

Family Money - Nina Bawden

Crime in Kensington - Christopher St John Sprigg

Fatality in Fleet Street - Christopher St John Sprigg

The Gentleman in the Parlour - W Somerset Maugham

Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie

Homecomings -  C P Snow

A predominance of crime fiction as always (50 out of 77 books), 14 non-fiction books. Approximately two thirds women authors. Stand out books for me were both non-fiction: Noreen Masud's A Flat Place and Bill Hayes' Insomniac City. 

So on to 2026. My only resolutions are to declutter 12 more things than I bring into the place (this sounds a doddle, but in my experience is harder than you'd think. We seem programmed, both individually and collectively, for accumulation) and end 2026 at least a few pounds lighter than I am now. No unrealistic goals, or absurd regimes, just a bit of running and fewer fried potato products. 

So Happy New Year all. See you in 2026

 

The New Normal (part 2)

The sign off from yesterday's post was misleading. It made it sound as if I've been nowhere since the Monday before last. Actually that's not true.

On the Tuesday it was St Patrick's Day, and I had train tickets for the 6.10 train from Euston to Chester, where I was meeting my brother - which was one reason I didn't really want to work from home: it made my journey to Euston half an hour longer, and I would have to log off 20 minutes early to give myself a comfortable buffer to find an alternative route if anything went wrong.

And something did go wrong. Firstly all trains out of Euston had been suspended and the announcer was telling everyone to wait on the concourse for further announcements. Secondly my phone, a shiny new but not humungously expensive Sony Xperia, was stolen out of the pocket of my bag.  And on that phone was my train ticket.

After a very stressful thirty minutes where I went back down to the Victoria line platform just in case I could have dropped it (wishful thinking, I knew I hadn't) and a visit to the underground office just in case it was handed in (ditto) and then Avanti couldn't locate my ticket because it had been bought through Trainline, and a very kind worker for West Coast trains let me log into my emails on her phone and forward the email to Avanti, who then equally kindly went into the back office and printed out both the out and the return tickets, I then tried to use a payphone to ring one of the few family phone numbers that hasn't changed in about 20 years, to see if they could pass on a message that I would be late but didn't know how late because the delay was due to a fatality, sadly, so it really would depend on the police.

Of course neither payphone worked (nice to know some things don't change), so I gave up and went into Marks' for a tiny bottle of wine and crisps for the journey and had just about managed to pay when there was an announcement that passengers should get on the train for Runcorn at platform 7, which would stop at Milton Keynes, where our service would depart from.

So we all hurried down to platform 7 and got on, until the train manager announced we should get off because it wasn't stopping at Milton Keynes at all. So, grumbling darkly, we got off and started traipsing back.

But then the platform staff waved us on again and the train manager explained that no-one had told him until this moment that he was, now, stopping at Milton Keynes, and the Holyhead train would be on the adjacent platform waiting for us.

At this point (not before, strangely enough) I wondered if somebody was trying to tell me something. But then I told myself not to be so egocentric and reminded myself that actually against all odds I was on a train going in the right direction, however long it took, and I had wine and crisps (although in my rush I had sadly forgotten to grab a plastic glass and had to neck the single serve bottle like a heathen), was virus free, had not lost anyone in a train accident or suicide, had a couple of very good books to read, had neither lost my temper or foolishly bought a brand new walk up ticket for £91 (although I would have if it had come to it), that the staff had been great, actually, and if I was so horribly late I missed my brother at Chester I knew where he lived.

That was Tuesday. Nine days ago, and I was still thinking it just might all blow over. The train manager was handing out bottled water, the train was packed. The rain was heavy. According to the BBC infographic I just checked we hadn't quite reached 2000 cases. My brother had rung me before I left to check I was still coming up and complain that he had wanted his team to work from home - they're IT, so they were all set up - but HR were resistant. A friend texted the previous evening, very annoyed, to say her department head was telling them to go on as normal, even though the chief exec was saying anyone who could work from home really ought to.

Looking back, neither of those people are jumpy people. Looking back, we had gone from just a few cases to 2000 in 17 days. Italy was in the tens of thousands, although I'm not sure I had really taken in those figures.

I was careful to put the mini wine bottle in my pocket for disposal later so no-one else had to handle it. I was annoyed that the tap didn't run for 20 seconds. I think, in retrospect, I was probably in denial, but I wasn't the only one. Schools were still open, as were pubs, art galleries and all the shops. Starbucks had just said they wouldn't be letting their staff handle reusable cups, but would still give the discount. I hadn't yet heard the phrase 'flatten the curve' which would be all over Twitter by the weekend.

I made a good connection at Milton Keynes but we lost even more time at Crewe where we divided. I reached Chester over an hour late, nearer two, and just had time to check my brother wasn't waiting in the pub opposite the station (he wasn't, there were only about eight people in there, all at different tables, which just shows things were already winding down. Either that or no-one goes to that pub much because although it's near the station it is nowhere near the town centre) and get a ticket on to Frodsham where he actually lives.

I didn't know his flat number and was just contemplated pushing a random button and explaining myself or throwing my empty plastic bottle at the right window once I remembered which that was, when I realised I could hear a mobile ringing through an open well-lit window on the second floor (my brother smokes, so he opens windows even when it's cold, and dark) and then, as I edged over that way I heard the loud but resigned voice of someone who had waited more than an hour at a station in a town he doesn't live in, and where (as he later told me) he had been told the trains from London were on time, rung a mobile which was answered by a stranger who immediately hung up, finally given up, and was now being interrogated about the whereabouts of a sibling who is, when all is said and done, older than he is.

'I don't know dad..' he said, and then, when I called up to him. 'Hang on. She's shouting outside.'

So this story ends with rum and lemonade, my changing my online passwords and logging remote devices out of Google with fraternal assistance, and a very efficient person at the phone company blocking my phone and my sim and ordering me a new one.

 Kings Cross, October 2017. The Eurostar to Paris, and then on to Avignon.

My brother's Christmas tree, the last time I saw him. 

He didn't have carpets or proper curtains but he certainly had plenty of fairy lights.

The New Normal (part 1)

The timestamp on the photo above is 2nd March 2020. I think when I took it I had some idea of a post about the approach of spring, even though it was still quite cool and extremely wet out. 

The one below was taken in late February in Hammersmith - that crowned figure is actually at the rarely used entrance to Hammersmith Town Hall, and I know I had a post in mind about how the old town hall building actually makes more sense if you consider that this side - which now faces onto a motorway - was the front, and the entrance everyone now has to enter through (which connects to a bleak annexe which required, when I worked there, the public to either try and struggle up to reception on an escalator with whatever they happened to be carrying - a buggy, a broken leg, all their worldly goods if evicted - or to snag a passing member of staff who could use their pass to get them into the lifts) was actually the back. 

Anyway they're refurbishing now, and hopefully it will all be much nicer and much more accessible. 

I've described it as late February. It was actually February 29th - leap year day - which I started with coffee at the Costa at Kew Bridge, before going into the Musical museum which I had heard about but never been to before and where I had a lovely little tour with an elderly volunteer guide who set lots of the various mechanical musical contraptions off for us and finished up with a Wurlitzer formerly belonging to the cinema in Kingston. They have tea dances there in the museum apparently, and show old films. There's a cafe which I made a mental note to go back to at some point when I hadn't already breakfasted in Costa. 

Then I walked down to Gunnersbury, hopped on the tube, got off at Ravenscourt Park to have a nosey at how the Hammersmith refurb was going, took the underpass beneath the motorway and walked along the river.

It was, as I think you can see from the sky in the pictures, a beautiful, bright, cold day. The Thames Path was busy with joggers and pubs and dog walkers, and so was Hammersmith Bridge, which is closed to road traffic at the moment. There was a small display explaining how a cycle and foot bridge was going to be put in temporarily so people could still get across the river while they repaired the road bridge. 

At Craven Cottage there was clearly a match about to start - hundreds of fans outside and more on their way, walking up through Bishops Park in the opposite direction to me. At Putney Bridge, where I got on the tube again, there's a secondhand bookshop which has been in business 27 years to my knowledge, and probably longer, and which used to have a sign telling customers to post the money through the door if the shop itself was closed. I turned over a few books, thinking about buying them, but ultimately didn't. 

And then, for the third time that day, I got back on the tube and came home, agreeably tired and quite pleased, and didn't write a blog post at all. I'm sporadic at best. I had posted the day before. And most of all I didn't realise, at that time, that I had had a remarkable day. That my old normal - both on weekends and weekdays - of hopping on and off the tube, in and out of shops and museums, moving through crowds of people - was about to change. It was known that Northern Italy had been hard hit by the coronavirus, and anyone returning from those regions had been asked to isolate, and I had taken a phone call at work from a summer school who usually had a lot of Chinese students (we told them it was a developing situation, and to follow HMG advice). But at that point only one British person had died - a passenger on the Diamond Princess - and it still seemed as if it would (or could) be contained. 

The weekend after my walk in Hammersmith I met up for a longer walk with my aunt Angela. As usual we congregated at my cousin's house to pick up the dog and have a cup of tea. We speculated with her whether her mother (also my aunt, and Angie's sister) would still be coming over from Southern Italy for part of the Easter holidays, or if flights would be cancelled. There was talk of Italy being in lockdown, of restriction of movement from north to south, but flights and trains were still taking passengers.  

I think it was the week after that when my aunt came out of the big Sainsbury's in Collier's Wood (I waited outside with the dog) saying how eerie it was - the shop like something from a film, the shelves empty. She had wanted eggs and I think some other things. I had wanted toilet roll. 

So I got the toilet roll from the Esso garage near home, and gave her three of my eggs in the interim. We discussed visiting the Hayward Gallery on the Monday, and she offered to give me a charger for a surface laptop, as my manager had suggested taking mine home every night in case I needed to isolate at short notice and the charger weighed as much as the laptop. I said yes please, although there had been a compromise arrangement, where I left it in an accessible drawer. 

I was considering going to Two Temple Place on the Sunday as well (it's a beautiful building that only hosts one exhibition a year, and they're always worth seeing) but was too lazy. 

Monday, as I was leaving work, my manager rang and asked me if I'd taken my laptop. I was mildly annoyed as I was going to a gallery and was almost at the exit, but turned around, went back up and got it, and passed on her message that we were to take laptops and work from home on the Tuesday. That was because she had been watching Boris' speech. 

The Hayward was lovely, restful, and not very busy. Mondays never are, in galleries, but this was exceptional. The cafe had me and one other person in it. I remember thinking I shouldn't touch things in the shop unless I was buying them, something I used to be told often as a child but have unlearnt along the way. I think I said, for the first time 'I'm not worried about catching it, I'm worried about passing it on', as if I needed an excuse to be cautious. 

I remember my hands felt dry because I'd been washing them so much. Not only when I went to the ladies, but every time I made tea or coffee, or entered a building. 

The exhibition was about trees, and my aunt and I sat in front of a huge screen where a birch forest - or rather a good mimic of one - rustled and swayed, and the leaves budded and greened and grew brown and dropped. 

Tuesday I worked from home. I have not been back to the office since. 

Syracuse

Italy again

I don't think I've been very fair to Bologna – I don't mean on this blog, where I haven't even mentioned my recent(ish) holiday, but certainly in conversation.

I spent three days there in late October and then another 3 days in Florence and I’ve been so full of Florence – which from the paper shops to the bridges to the views across the historic city has a magic all it's own – that all I've had to say about Bologna is that it rained but I went up the tower anyway and they're big on food. 

And yet it is a place with considerable charm and history. The statuary may be more solid and less antique, and the transport hub for train and bus has been laid out with considerably less consideration for the natural beauty of the area than you would find at - say - Charing Cross, but the vast square in the old town has immense and beautiful buildings and the view across the city from the tower is well worth the climb. 

One of the beautiful buildings. 

I also stumbled across the old University. Established in the 11th century (10 years or so before Oxford) it not only had an anatomical theatre but gorgeous crests painted on the walls and ceilings of the halls and what I want to call cloisters - but apparently only religious buildings can have cloisters so I can't. 

Here's a favourite anyway:  

 and here are some more:

Even in the older parts the city feels solid and prosperous and well fed and yet I kept finding small decorative snippets I wanted to snap. 

So although Florence has captured me romantically it's Bologna I've been looking up to see what I missed in my 3 days there. Only this evening I stopped looking because of course I'm going to go back and find out for myself. 

City Walls and Small Gold Trains

Unlike Naples, which plasters the image of Vesuvius on every available piece of tourist tat, Verona has two symbols it likes to use. One is the Arena in the Piazza Bra - built in AD 30 and astonishingly still in use for concerts (they were just about to start the Opera season when I was there, the walls outside flanked with sphinxes and emperors, all gold-painted skin and lapis lazuli lined eyes, safely enclosed behind temporary fencing that wouldn't keep a determined nine year old out. Not that it needed to, none of the props were mauled),

The other is that universal symbol of romance, the heart. This is largely Shakespeare's fault. His version of Romeo and Juliet may have been based on earlier writings, but it was he who made the play, creating the characters and the poetic language that can make something feel true even to people who know perfectly well it's not.

Like, for example, the crowd standing under Juliet's balcony in the Casa de Giulietta on Via Cappello. The balcony was not there in Shakespeare's time and the similarity of Capulet to Cappello is probably meaningless, but that's not the point - the point is the other people, the crowd itself, and the crowd that has been flowing in and out through the gates of the courtyard for years, writing on the boards fixed to the walls, pinning up post its, fastening locks around the metal gratings of the doors. It's that idea of being madly in love, so in love that nothing else in the world matters, that people truly come for.

Verona itself can only add to that intoxication. This is a very, very pretty city. In the evenings it smells of jasmine and sings with calling, diving, swallows. The walls and tiles of the houses are made of the warm red brick we flatter ourselves our own houses are here (when in reality London clay is a miserable yellow brown) and many have frescoes, fading now to hints of pastel and gold. There are innumerable pavement cafes where you can linger as long as you like, delightful bridges over the shallow but fast flowing Adige, piazzas with fountains and statues everywhere, a city wall with decorative crenellations, and if you walk up one of the nearby hills - say to the Castel San Pietro - it's green and leafy and charming and the view is wonderful.

It has a silly little gold train which winds around the streets for 5 euros per person, and shows you everything in half an hour, and that too is part of Verona's charm. It's small, even intimate. You could be 20, and skint, and walk everywhere and not go into a single museum or church or restaurant but still feel like you knew Verona, in a way you could never know Paris or London without spending money.