Category Archives: Uncategorized

Joanna McDonald I’ve been meaning to write something for several weeks. For various reasons I’ve written very little since the summer. At one point I was going to write something about Guerrilla Warfare, triggered by finding a book of that title in a charity shop in Morningside. The book, a 1940s Penguin Special, is byContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 85“

The Briefing In the house in which I grew up, in Southfields in south-west London, there was a badly framed print on the wall. It was called The Briefing, and bore the signature Frank O. Salisbury. The print showed a group of  Second World War RAF pilots in flying dress gathered around a briefing table.Continue reading “Through a glass darkly – 84”

A quartet of gifts I don’t like being given gifts of books as a general rule. I buy plenty of books for myself, almost invariably second-hand. And sometimes people give me books which I then feel somewhat reluctantly that I have to read. But for my birthday this year, back in July, I was givenContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 83”

A mini-break in Laon I have just had 36 hours away in Laon, in the département de l’Aisne. It is a striking city, the medieval town perched on top of a steep hill that rises abruptly a hundred metres  above the plains of Picardy. With the very distinctive silhouette of its enormous Gothic cathedral. IContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 82”

Salut de Chantilly I am writing this from Chantilly, where I have been since the beginning of September, doing a locum chaplaincy at St Peter’s, Chantilly. There has been an Anglican chaplaincy in Chantilly since the early 19th century, established to serve the needs of the English-speaking community who came here to develop the horse-racingContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 81”

State of the Nation The UK is not currently in a good place. Lots of things are going wrong at the same time. First there is a huge cost-of-living crisis. Relatedly inflation is now running at 10% and is forecast to hit 15% sometime next year. Interest rates have gone up in the past fewContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 80”

The Vercors The Vercors is a rugged area of mountains and plateaux in south-east France, about 100 kilometres south-east of Lyon. The area measures about 50 kilometres from north to south, and thirty kilometres from east to west; straddling the departments of the Isère and the Drôme.  The corner of the Vercors is clearly visibleContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 79”

I’ve never been a wild swimmer. [Perhaps I’ve never been a wild anything ?] But swimming was part of my childhood. In the mid and late 1950s, we went, usually with my father and older brother to a variety of swimming pools. Some were municipal indoor baths, most often a 25 yard pool with greenishContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 78“

Susie and I have just been ‘up north’ for a week, up the west coast. Based mainly in and around Gairloch, where we have spent time in each of the past three summers. We had initially thought of a two-island trip, to Arran and thence on to Islay. Named in anticipation no doubt of ourContinue reading “Glass Darkly 77 – Up the West Coast”

Montebourg Montebourg is a small town in the Cotentin peninsula, just off the N13 road that leads up to Cherbourg. The town was 90% destroyed by fighting in 1944, so there are very few historic buildings in the town centre. But there are three bakeries, two butchers, one advertising prize-winning tripes and pieds de porc,Continue reading “Through a glass darkly – 76”