I saw this on Twitter. Four years old at least. Close to the bone. Horribly accurate. I may have to pin this post.
As Plato put it
As Plato put it: Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.
Whatever the outcome of today’s general election, the lyrics of this fugue will still be true. Unfortunately.
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Diaries, 1st July 2026, Cats on Hot Brick Walls and Cool Grass
My evening has gone, an evening when I thought I might write a post, but instead I chaperoned Bo’sun, fed Wilf again, fussed Tyko, watched Bluey and watered the garden plants.
It is not as hot as last week thank goodness. By Friday I was finding it very hard going. Now it’s a nice mid 20s C with a lovely cool breeze, though I see the mercury is rising again in a few days. I find it very hard to forgive the climate change deniers, the politicians who promise action and then do nothing, the ones who just want to drill for all the oil and mine for all the coal. When I say I find it hard, I mean I find it impossible. We had two storms last week. Both happened at night, and both woke me up. I should say perhaps that I slept through the storm of 1987 which was the one we still talk about, but perhaps my windows were closed then. The first storm was spectacular. Its as aloe right above us, so the lightning and the thunder were almost simultaneous. I worried about Wilf, the stray, but he did not seem traumatised when appeared in the morning. The second storm began with a loud clap of thunder, then a flash of lightning, but for a few minutes no rain. The the clouds opened and the rain fell like a curtain. The result of these two storms is a very green London. For a few short hours after each storm the air felt fresher.
I am grateful to Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, for all the things he has done to reduce air pollution in the capital. It has made such a difference restricting vehicles with high emissions from being driven here. We have 20 mile per hour roads, and that further reduces traffic pollution. The integrated public transport system generally works well, and there are definitely fewer car owners in my neighbourhood than there were a couple of decades ago. All this may come as a surprise to those who have heard D Trump claiming that Khan is trying impose Sharia law on the capital, that you can barely leave your home without someone putting a knife to your throat. We have a problem with ‘phone thefts. Boys dressed in black from head to foot, wearing face masks speed by the unwary on bikes and scooters and snatch their ‘phones. Most of these ‘phones seem to end up in China which suggests there are adults behind these thefts and this is organised crime, with boys being recruited, rewarded probably with cash, at an age when this seems exciting and edgy. They may be have been groomed, befriended by adults who give them meals and clothes, then explain that now they need to repay these gifts. It’s a difficult problem to solve.
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Diaries, 13th June 2026, Of Cats
I recognised the writing on the envelope. My friend Anna in Lecce. For some reason, and I do not think I have second sight, I felt it contained bad news. I shook myself and told myself I was being silly. I don’t remember how old Anna is, several years older than I am, and I, while still determined to remain in my prime, am officially old. Well, it couldn’t be to tell me she’d died because she would hardly have addressed the envelope. Or could she have been that organised, leaving letters written to old friends to be posted in the event? Unlikely, though it strikes me as a fairly good idea. I opened the envelope.
It was bad news. Not her death, but the death of her beloved cat. She explained he’d had cancer, was sixteen, so around the same age as my cat Bo’sun and had died a few weeks ago. She had hoped they would grow old together. She couldn’t WhatsApp me as she’d changed her ‘phone and had lost all her contacts. She tells me he was her soul mate, that they had “une entente parfaite”. I do not speak Italian, and Anna does not speak English. We became friends in Marseille decades ago, and French is our common language. I hope no one has said he was only a cat. Do people say such crass things in Italy? I expect they do.
I’m not sure Bo’sun is my soul mate, but I love him dearly and want him to live a good long time, happy and in good health. He’s being very good about my divided attention. There is a cat who may be stray, may be feral, though I am increasingly thinking the former, who I’m feeding and trying to befriend. He has a broken tail which is bent and doesn’t do the job cats tails usually do of flagging their feelings. No upright hooked happy pleased-to-see-you tail from Wilf. Near neighbours have been calling him Stumpy, but I feel he needs a name to give him dignity.
Progress is slow, but I believe he understands I have no bad intentions towards him. I’m not going to kick him and I do not mean him harm. When he sees me, I think he sees food. I am a meal ticket and this boy has hollow legs. He started by waiting at a distance. I’d put food down and back away. Now I find him behind me. He’ll take treats I hold between my fingers. He blinks at me, and today rolled his back in a very flirtatious way. I have been able to give him a nano second’s scratch behind the ears, and he has eaten his meal a few feet from where I have been sitting. Today I took a length of string and a very licked, very sucked cat nip toy of Bo’sun’s outside to see if he would engage with either. First I tried the string. He watched it, then pounced and caught it in his mouth. I wasn’t expecting his next move. He ran away with it as though it were some sort of prize. glancing back at me as though I might chase him to reclaim it. It was however trumped by the toy. He ran away into the shrub with that one.
I wish I understood what it all signifies.
Diaries, 7th-8th June 2026, Last days in India, Chandigarh
I was thinking of calling this post Confessions of an Absentee Blogger, but maybe I’ll save that for another day. I’ve been promising a final blog about my trip to India for a while. It’ll three months soon since I came home, so it’s about time. One way and another India has stayed very much in my mind. I still have a red thread tied about my left wrist. It shows no sign of breaking. I think it’s acrylic wool, so I may be wearing it for the rest of my life. On the train to Chandigarh I read a copy of the New Delhi newspaper, distributed freely to passengers. Very civilised. In it I was interested in reviews of books by two authors, Meeti Shroff-Shah who was described as the Indian Agatha Christie, and Sri Lankan author Ashok Ferrey. I managed to get ebooks of three of Shroff-Shahs novels and have read and enjoyed two of them so far. Ferrey was harder to find. Although published by Penguin, he’s not published here. I found a copy of one book on a website which deals mainly with secondhand copies, and having read and thoroughly enjoyed that, I wanted more. It was frustrating. I tried the charity shops in tooting where there is a sizeable Sri Lankan community. No joy. By dint of returning with a certain amount of frequency, I now have tow more of his books, as yet unread.
On the ‘plane home I sat with Rob and Raj from Birmingham who were lovely. They had been visiting family in the north of India. Raj wanted to know where I had been, what I had done and where I’d like to go next. I said Manipur, as Rahul my excellent guide in Chandigarh had been telling me about it, Shimla and also Mumbai. She nodded her approval of the first two, but told me the pollution in Mumbai was much worse than Delhi. We had already agreed Delhi’s air quality leaves much to be desired. I made a mental note to forget about Mumbai. But I’m back to thinking about it, mainly because Shroff-Shah’s stories are set there, and it’s making me curious. She obviously loves the place and she writes about the food a lot and well. Some time ago I realised I only really enjoy detective novels if food features strongly. So Donna Leon and Qiu Xiaolong are crime writers I seek out, while Agatha Christie, who Shroff-Shah evidently admires, although respected as the Queen of Crime, seldom if ever ventures into the kitchen, is further down my list. Incidentally, I have just read Fair Play by Louise Hegharty which is a murder mystery novel like none I have read. She’s a very original writer. I have a Kate Atkinson Jackson Brodie crime novel from the library, so crime stories seem to be my current go to genre, taking over from the run of Second World War stories I have recently been reading.
Back to my last day in India. After visiting Nek Chand Sani’s Rock Garden we headed for Sukna Lake. It was around the middle of the day and getting hot. Fortunately, there was lots of shade. we walked along the path but did not take the cruise boat across the lake. The Open Hand featured here too. The gardens around the lake are beautiful and very well maintained. I appreciated the information boards.
Rahul was keen to show me the Lake Peepal Tree a Heritage Tree of Chandigarh. Initially I was confuse as I was hearing not Peepal but people. He told me this particular tree, more than 150 years old, is a living symbol of the city’s history, culture, and ecological wisdom. You might be guessing I enjoyed Sukna Lake. Once again, the citizens of this city have Le Corbusier to thank. I understood this better when we visited the Sukna Gallery and saw the photographs and other exhibits. His determination that should be a vehicle free area, peaceful and for the use of all is clear from the documents.
When I first arrived in Delhi, I was struck by the hollyhocks by the side of the road as we left the airport. Hollyhocks seem such a quintessential English cottage garden flower, the sort of thing you’d expect Jane Marple to have growing along her path. It turns out they come from much further away. Just gorgeous.
Diaries, 10th May 2026, Second Intermission: Happy Birthday to David Attenborough and to Me
I shall at some point complete my posts about my trip to India. Given the amount of time it’s taken me so far, I’m grateful I wasn’t there longer. The celebrations marking David Attenborough’s 100th birthday on Friday were understandably rather greater and grander than for my more meagre milestone a week earlier. Attenborough is that very rare thing, a genuine person who combines wit, intelligence and charisma with outstanding ability and enthusiasm in his chosen field. Before these celebrations I knew he was a national hero. I din’t realise how respected he is around the world. A lesser man would let it go to his head, but that’s another nice thing about Attenborough, he is not vain or starry in the least. The trust and admiration he inspires is richly deserved. Talking of lesser men, we had local elections on Thursday. As predicted Labour got hammered. Reform did quite well, and reading the headlines (true to form, the Express and the Mail were hugely excited ) you could be forgiven for thinking this party was now in charge of the majority of local councils the length and breadth of Britain. It is not so, though they split the vote and leave quite a few without a clear majority. I understand Farage, very much a lesser man, was filmed in a helicopter so he could be somewhere where Reform was winning or had won. I didn’t see it, avoiding his face leering from my television screen has become a habit. I have seen photographs of him grinning in delight. Or is it a different emotion? What makes Farage happy, apart from money which he obviously likes a lot, and doesn’t feel he needs to declare as parliament requires? Is it the idea that he might be closer to Downing Street and trashing the country? Dismantling the NHS, expelling people who have lived here all their lives because he doesn’t like their religion/colour/liberal ideas/anti nationalism, removing women’s rights, gay rights, revoking equal rights? Accelerating climate crisis and the destruction of the planet? Grinding the faces of the poor into the mud while claiming he is a man of the people? He has been quoted as saying women touch him and ask him to heal them. This sounds so unlikely I am wondering if he has been taking hallucinogenic drugs. Heal them from what? Verrucas?
As I said, the celebrations for my birthday were rather more low key, but wonderful for all that. I received some lovely cards. I’m tempted to photograph all of them but I’ll stick at two.
The child on the right in the photograph is Rosemary. We have known each other since we were five. The child on the left is me. I remember this photo being taken by her mother and how we let our hair fall across our faces deliberately. The card on the right is from one of my nephews and his family. I din’t know they realised I am very keen on early nights.
As mentioned in a previous post, the first intermission one I believe, it was while walking with my cousin Russell in mid April that I settled on a walk for my birthday. It was a walk we have done many times, the Guildford circular via Compton, but maybe the first time the three of us have done it together. Celia and I caught the train from London and met Russell at Guildford Station. The weather was fine. My birthday last year was unseasonably warm, 32C, and I spent it in at Kew Gardens, again in Celia’s company. This year it was low 20s, so perfect. We walked up the Mount, across the open spaces and along the edge of a large field down to where the woods began and the path to Compton. We talked about gooseberries. How they were common in our childhoods but not now. My parents used to grow them. Have they just fallen out of fashion, or is there another reason? At Watts Gallery we sat outside at a picnic table under a parasol and lingered over our packed lunches. We had slices of cake from the café. Russell had Victoria sponge, Celia a coffee caramel, and I had banana and blueberry, the vegan option.
Our pace was leisurely. We remarked on changes, hedgerows dug up, new fencing, cattle in field where there had been crops. Worried by a horse lying down in a paddock while two other horses watched it, we tried to find the number of the stud farm to which it belonged. Then the horse got to its feet. It had been enjoying a lie down in the sunshine. At Loseley long horned cattle and their calves watched us over a field gate and then followed us around the corner. Their horns seemed to be in artistic arrangements, expressing their personalities perhaps. The end had been completely restored and the birdlife was enjoying it. No red kites or deer this time. Lovely House and gardens opened to the public two days later for the summer. I had emailed to ask about the gardens as the site wasn’t entirely clear. The answer was there was no access until 3rd May but the Farmm (sic) shop was open. Unfortunately we couldn’t see how to get access from our path.
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Diaries, 26th April 2026, India: Chandigarh, Nek Chand Saini’s Rock Garden
I have been saying I want to visit India for over thirty years, but it’s a big country, and I didn’t have a specific destination in mind. Then some fifteen years ago, maybe a bit more I came across photographs of some of Nek Chand’s creations and was captivated. In 2024, I noticed the Gallery of Everything, a small venue in Marylebone had an exhibition about him. There were a limited number of exhibits and a video which I watched entranced. Until that moment I had not realised how extensive was the rock garden he created.
There was an excellent review in the Guardian, though I disagree profoundly with the description of Le Corbusier’s plans as being those of a megalomaniac, which will give you the background. I urge you to read it. Chand was a remarkable man who never saw himself as an artist. He made his sculptures and mosaics from discarded waste materials including glass bangles, mudguards, electrical connectors, you name it, if he found it, he used it. The result is, to my mind, every bit as impressive as the Taj Mahal, and a lot more joyous. I’d love to go back, to wander through it again.
I took a lot of pictures, but as not as many as I thought I had. The looking was the best part.
I’ll let the pictures I did take do the talking.
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Diaries, 22nd April 2026, India: Chandigarh and the Capitol Complex
I wrote earlier about how much I enjoyed the train journey from Delhi to Chandigarh, how we were served breakfast and provided with newspapers. Admittedly I was in a first class carriage, but this was not the swishest of India Railways stock. We had good leg room, the seats were comfortable, and the toilets, if not wonderful, were quite usable.
I knew Chandigarh was going to be a contrast with the cities I had already visited. It’s modern, built post partition, commissioned by Nehru, Independent India’s first Prime Minister as a the new capital for East Punjab. Partition meant that the previous capital, Lahore, was now in Pakistan. The team of architects invited by Nehru was headed by Le Corbusier and included his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, and husband and wife team Maxwell Fry and Jane B Drew. This is what Nehru said: let this be a new town, symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past…an expression of the nation’s faith in the future.
I loved the hope it embodies, a hope that burgeoned in the late 1940s, post Indian independence, post the Second World War. A time when people believed they were building a fairer, forward looking world characterised by equality and democracy. More from Nehru: Now I have welcomed very greatly one great experiment in India, which you know very well, Chandigarh. Many people argue about it, some like it, some dislike it. It is totally immaterial, whether you like it or not; it is the biggest job of its kind in India. That is why I welcome it. It is the biggest because it hits you on the head, because it makes you think. You may squirm at the impact but it makes you think and imbibe new ideas and, the one thing that India requires in so many fields is to be hit on the head so that you may think. I do not like every building in Chandigarh. I like a few very much, I like the general conception of the township very much, but what I like above all is this creative approach, not being tied down to what has been done by our forefathers and the like, but thinking out in new terms, try to think in terms of light and air and ground and water and human beings, not in terms of rules and regulations laid down by our ancestors.Â
The architectural style is brutalism which is currently out of fashion in many people’s eyes. However, like all periods of architecture there is good and bad, so I hope the baby will not be thrown out with the bath water. Not so long ago people were sniffy about Victorian architecture, then Edwardian. Now there are societies which speak up for those styles and campaign to save examples from demolition. I like good brutalism. I like Coventry, the Barbican and the South Bank in London, UEA in Norwich. So this was a treat. Le Corbusier imagined the city as a human being. So different parts of the city represent different parts off the human body.
The Capitol Complex is Chandigarh’s geopolitical head and is made up of the Secretariat, the High Court and the Legislature Assembly. We didn’t get inside any of the buildings, and the exteriors would all be the better for a good clean. Nonetheless, they are impressive and the Ceremonial Door which is the formal entrance to the Assembly is joyous. There were peacocks, ducks, black kites as we approached. A dog relaxed by the High Court. We were on a public tour with an official guide and a cheerful officer of the tourist police. I was with my guide Rahul who was far more enthusiastic and engaging about the buildings than our official guide. There were several women in the group who had just finished a yoga retreat. We chatted aimiably.
Diaries, 15th April 2026, Intermission: A Walk in Surrey
I’ll get back to India and Chandigarh which was the high spot of my time there, but today it’s about a walk in Surrey I did yesterday with my cousin Russell. It started at Worplesdon station. My family’s address and telephone number in my teens was Worplesdon, but we weren’t in the village. There are, as Muriel Spark wrote, classes within classes in Peckham. The same truth applies to Worplesdon, We were not in the couth, monied part, So unsurprisingly, although this was close to that address, after a few hundred yards or so I had no idea where we were. Neither had Russell. Fortunately we had walk instructions.
The weather forecast for the day had promised unbroken cloud. It was wrong. We had sun. My nose is actually a little bit burnt. The first part of the walk took us through country lanes, and then beside a farmland, and later a printing works converted into luxury flats. As the notes said, we were ‘in the countryside’. It was all lovely. We met a man walking a shy Staffie who had been rescued from Greece. History unknown but, his nervousness tells a story that hints at abuse. Flatteringly the dog decided we were alright. The things people do to animals. What is wrong with us?
We kept exclaiming. Or maybe that was just me. I picked a bag of wild garlic. There was so much you couldn’t see where I had taken it from. For the rest of the day my bag smelled wonderful. Just after midday we reached the River Wey where we ate our packed lunches before heading into a pub. It was busy with lunchtime diners, but we took our drinks outside to the garden where I made friends with a young black Labrador. Russell went to check out the nearby road as he thought he recognised it as being near where a girl he had been very much in love with in his late teens had lived. It was. He didn’t really want to talk about it other than to say it had not ended well. The hurts we carry.
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Diaries, 8th April 2026, India: Jaipur part two
A glorious, sunny day here in London, 25C, a forecast of early summer before temperatures drop at the end of the week. I finished reading Serendipity by Ashok Ferrey. He’s another writer I read about in the New Delhi paper that was handed out to passengers on the train. He’s from Sri Lanka, studied maths at Oxford then lived in Brixton for a while working on building sites. I had never heard of him. I got a second copy of this novel, and see on the back that it was only for sale in the Indian Subcontinent.
Two weeks since I came home, and I still have a few posts about my holiday to go. I really liked Jaipur. It was my favourite of the three cities we visited. After a busy morning, we had an equally busy afternoon with a new guide. We walked up to the Amber Fort in sunshine. A hill is always a good location for a fort. Getting to the top of the hill was the most exercise I’d had in days. The pathway wound round and was cobbled. Sometimes elephants transport visitors to the top of the hill, but they were busy with the festival and otherwise engaged, so we walked.
The place was buzzing. It seemed half of Jaipur had decided to spend the afternoon there too. There were dancers, and a man with a horse costume. It reminded me of Morris dancing with a lot more colour. As well as being a defensive structure, the fort is also a palace. While the buildings today are a mere 400-500 years old, they were built on the site of an earlier, eleventh century fort.
Maybe I should just let the pictures do most of the talking.
Our guide was knowledgeable, and twinkly. He delivered his information with humour, and seemed very relaxed. It turned out his other job was a priest. He was also a Brahmin. Interesting as our group leader insisted there is no longer a caste system in India. The photos above are of the Ganesh Pol, a three storied gateway which connects to the private apartments via the top level which is screened for the ladies in purdah.
The Sheesh Mahal is also known as the Palace of Mirrors. No further explanation necessary.
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Diaries, 4th April 2026, India: Jaipur, part 1
So, we arrived in Jaipur, the Pink City, and our smartest hotel, with views over the Jal Mahal, a water palace built in the end of the C17. It was pretty impressive. Jaipur also seemed cleaner than Agra and Delhi, which was welcome. It may have been that it rained so the air felt fresher, I don’t know.
Jaipur was our last stop before returning to Delhi, where this organised tour ended. We had a pretty full day with, in my opinion, our best guide. He knew his stuff, but used more humour. I didn’t feel as peppered with dates as with our other guides. We began with a visit to the wholesale flower market which was packed. It was a festival day and bag upon bag of flowers, mainly marigolds were being bought for the temples.
Diaries, 2nd April 2026, India: a day on the coach and a night in a Maharajah’s Palace
It’s glorious here today in London, full on spring. Buds, leaves and flowers unfurling everywhere, trees in blossom, blue skies and warm sun. I have been out and about getting some things done. I never thought I would think of the Walworth Road as clean, but after the extreme amounts of rubbish I saw in Delhi, Agra, and along the roads in between, the litter here seems almost innocent. When I first came to London I thought Londoners did not understand how to use bins. I’d be following someone along the street as they unwrapped a chocolate bar or a pack of cigarettes, and they would just let the wrappers fall, even when there was a litter bin at hand. There are litter bins in the parts of India I saw, but not enough. I am also grateful anew for the measures that have been taken over the years I have lived in London to reduce traffic pollution. When I got home last week, I marvelled at the clean air. I had to remind myself of that as I walked down a busy road this afternoon and got a lungful of exhaust fumes. Everything is relative.
From the Agra fort we boarded our coach again. Our luggage had been on it since mid morning. We had the same driver for the whole of the triangle. He was separated from us by a glass screen, and there was a younger man with him. We had all taken seats on the coach the first day, and by and large we stuck to them. I was towards the back. So until informed by someone seated near the front, I was completely unaware one of the younger man’s duties was involvement with other vehicles, gesticulating and probably swearing at other drivers, and making sure we got the best of any encounter. He was also in charge of the stool which he produced and held steady for us to get on and off the coach which had an unfeasibly high step, and to spray our hands with anti-bacterial gel when ever we boarded.
We bounced along. Our driver was great, but the coach’s suspension was not. When we reached the rumble strips which signalled a toll booth approached it was quite painful. We turned off the main road into a street lined with shops, and stopped. We’d arrived as close to our night’s accommodation as the coach could go. We were accompanied by what seemed by all the lack children up a narrow lane to the hotel. They smiled at us, wanted to touch our hands, our bags, offered to carry anything we were carrying. They talked to us, and we smiled and nodded in return. Then we saw the hotel, the Suroth Mahal. Now I have looked it up, I’m puzzled by the description of its location as being in a city. It felt like a large village, arranged mainly along one road. From my bedroom window I could see it extended further, so town I can understand. City, I cannot. I enjoyed reading the description, and seeing photographs of it when it was first converted into a hotel. There are certainly some areas now needing attention, but as a contrast with everywhere else we stayed, it was magical. Well perhaps not for Kate, who was badly bitten by mosquitos in the night and the AC unit dripped on her while she tried to sleep. I was glad the electric cattle advertised as being in the rooms, turned out to be a kettle. I’m still to sure what the ‘gorgeous jail work’ might be. The decor included numerous illustrations taken from the Karma Sutra, a painting of a woman in nightwear quite unlike my own hung above my bed. The ceilings were fabulous.
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