I could (not) have been a Boat Race blue…

The Churchill College ladies’ eight in winter 1973 – that’s me in the front row on the right, during my first term at Cambridge University…

Today is the traditional Varsity Boat Race on the Thames in London, between Oxford University and Cambridge University, about which I am always nostalgic, although I have never been there to see it. There is a preview, from the point of view of Cambridge, here…

The first men’s race was in 1829 but nowadays there are four races – men’s and women’s plus the reserve crew races between Isis (Oxford) and Goldie (Cambridge) for the men and Osiris and Blondie for the women.

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Working From Home: A year of living differently

When I’m not working – my desk with office laptop switched off

This weekend is the anniversary of my starting to work from home. I don’t really want to talk about it and there is no need for you to read this, but I still feel I must mark this most unusual of years!

I have been one of the lucky ones, working full time from home for Cardiff Council Highways and earning a wage. With fewer distractions I have probably achieved more than I would have in the office. I am blessed with great colleagues and with bosses who don’t micro-manage me. We keep in touch through Teams – a business equivalent of the much-mentioned “Zoom”.

In a way I feel jealous of those who have been forced to do “nothing” for a year as I have found so very little time for myself and my hobbies. But that is churlish and ungrateful. I am not starving, I am not alone and I have no children to home school.

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Four remembered stories…

Girls reading, a painting by Henri Lebasque (1865-1937) (Source:Wikimedia Commons)

Once upon a training course we were asked to think back to the earliest stories we could remember. Some people recalled true stories, some recalled fairy stories. When we revealed our most persistent memories we realised they seemed to say something about ourselves and what drives us.

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From the non-digital archive: Garden Festival 1992

The red dragon of Wales at the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival in 1992

I can’t believe that 2017 sees the 25th anniversary of the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival that brought two million visitors to Blaenau Gwent in South East Wales.

The festival lasted six months, from May until October and transformed a derelict industrial wasteland into a blossoming landscape nearly two miles long.

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I wouldn’t be me without… Patricia Soleil

I could have been an Esmeralda – this is Disney’s interpretation in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1996

Forgive me for being self-indulgent, but I am going to write occasional blog posts about the people or things without which I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

First of all, I found out only in recent years that I was named after somebody.

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From the non-digital archive: Irish dancing 1995

Celtic designs on an Irish dancing dress

That great show Riverdance is in Cardiff this week, at St David’s Hall for a couple of days as part of a tour to celebrate 21 years since the first performance. By chance it is now 21 years since I took these pictures of young people dancing in the Irish style in Kinsale, County Cork, in the summer of 1995, before the Riverdance phenomenon began in earnest.

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From the non-digital archive: Yabusame 1991

A Japanese horseback archery contest took place in Cardiff in 1991

Occasionally I look back at the pictures I took in the days before digital cameras. This time the subject was a Japanese Yabusame (horseback archery) event in Cardiff’s Cooper’s Field, part of Bute Park, on Sunday, September 15, 1991. That was a particular boom time for industry links between Wales and Japan and we all loved anything Japanese.

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Words from the past: Antimacassar…

Antimacassar set for a doll’s house, from the Buttercup Miniatures site…

As a child I floated in a sea of wonderful words, many of which I don’t hear any more – so I am always delighted when I come across them in a crossword. One such is antimacassar, which I spotted again the other day.

We didn’t actually

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I wouldn’t be here today without Holton Heath

Admiralty Park, Holton Heath…

There’s a great novel called Ursula Under by Ingrid Hill, “a daring saga of culture, history, and heredity”. A little girl falls down a mineshaft and we learn of all her wonderful ancestors who were born thanks to minor miracles that brought their parents together or saved them from early death. By quirks of fate does our personal DNA come together.

Obviously I would not be here today if my parents had not met. So in a way I owe my existence to World War II and specifically to the manufacture of explosives by the Royal Navy…

My father was from South Wales, my mother from South Dorset. What could possibly

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A childish fear of volcanoes…

The Indonesian volcano of Rinjani in 1994, by Oliver Spalt on Wikimedia Commons

STOP PRESS: Moments after I published this, reports came in of a volcano erupting in Sumatra – so best wishes to everyone struggling there…
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Did you have an irrational fear of something when you were a child? In my case, for a while at least, I was terrified of volcanoes. You might say that’s not so crazy. But as I lived in Wales, where an eruption would be pretty near impossible, I think it was.

So this post is all about what

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