November 10, 2011 – 10:13 am
And so to table. One thing I recalled from our last visit to Italy was the restraint shown with alcohol. You seldom saw a local have more than a glass or maybe two at dinner. Very civilised. This despite the vino de casa usually being light and easy. But today we are here for the [...]
November 7, 2011 – 9:25 am
Holiday Notebook: When in Rome, check out what the Romans do. It’s hard to dispute that a noticeably high percentage of locals carry off that hard to pin down quality we call Style. Tuesday at Rosati: Espresso at Cafe Rosati in the Piazza del Popolo. (QUite likely the original of the old wannabe Rosati in [...]
October 26, 2011 – 11:06 am
What does a cop eat for breakfast? Vanilla rice porridge with poached quince, followed with a double-shot macchiato, chased by a single macchiato. Hard-core but nice, and now he can keep affording it. What baby cops break their fast on, I dunno — MuckMuffins? Our good cop is an older fella, into his 60s, street [...]
October 7, 2011 – 11:04 am
Diana Gribble at home, September 2011 Prefactory babble: most remarkable (The eulogy below; skip this preface as you will.) Yesterday, jangling phone, Constant Gardener saying: it’s a terrible line, ring back in five and I’ll get Chong to answer on a better connection. Seeing that I was asleep, reasonable at 7:45 am after a late [...]
September 29, 2011 – 10:52 am
This morning, at the quack of dawn, we heard and then saw, this bird on a pyre — a duck on our neighbour’s chimney pot. Our neighbours have form with ducks and chimneys — some years ago, the other neighbour came back from holidasy to discover a wild duck — by that time it was, [...]
September 19, 2011 – 11:02 am
Dear D_, Our week here’s nearly gone: it’s been a moist most pleasant stay with the right proportions of gallivanting to rest: about 6 to 9 hours on the street each day. Unlike, say, KL, Hanoi is easy to gad about; apart from the mind-suspending Zen practice of crossing traffic, and the accompanying pollution, it’s [...]
September 16, 2011 – 11:35 am
Dear D_, Travel is literally dislocating and, I find, often dashed uncomfortable. Mother, for instance, finds it hard work to sleep in hotel beds. Our friend B_ packs her pillow. And one acquaintance carries dried food as a fallback on days of especial internal delicacy. On a clear day you can see pho-ever But benign [...]
September 15, 2011 – 11:21 am
Dear D_, Did you catch my last post? It included the frivolous caption of the soldier wearing a revolutionary Argyle vest. And weaponising a bamboo garden torch. It had a fine payoff today at the Vietnam Revolution Museum where, near the end of a long circuit, the frivolity was scooped up, bundled and rubbed into [...]
September 14, 2011 – 11:21 am
Dear D_, I think you might like this place, it has a certain feeling about it — a tipping quality, as if it is trying to remember who it wanted to be. (But then, one always seems to travel with a mirror.) Happily, Hanoi is replete with puzzles and riddles. Puzzle One: Are the Vietnamese [...]
September 13, 2011 – 11:02 am
Dear D__, We spent the morning “getting lost” in the Old Quarter. The maze of shop streets, souk-like, demonstrate where supermarket aisles derive: a street of shoes, and one of silk; a street of hair grips and sparkly plastic bows (so powder pinked your teeth ache); the street of mechanics — suddenly smoke-blackened and greasy, [...]
