Drive up the coast road from the Italian border (as Edward Fox did in Day of the Jackal) along the French Riviera as far as Roquebrunne (as Ernest Hemingway did in Men Without Women), and climb the hairpins (as Grace Kelly and Cary Grant did in To Catch a Thief, and indeed as Grace Kelly […]

Week two at the City Lit, in the beginners’ guitar class, and the usual complaints about stretching for a C chord. It’s a leap, it’s true, and the first (of many) point at which the debutant wonders if they’re cut out for the guitar after all. My usual joke amid the grumbles is to say […]

Photos here: www.heathermcdonough.com/USA2010 and some videos, playing with the new Canon 5D, from Dalton & Vickie’s dairy farm in Kutztown, Pennsylvania & —and a visit to the Martin Guitar factory in Nazareth, PA http://www.facebook.com/dharrison1?v=app_2392950137#!/video/video.php?v=418781588836

A day of delights, a day for keeps. Friday, and a concocted tale of fatigue and vague illness to deflect the attentions of the school, and—above all, following a late school concert the evening before, which included an epileptic episode in the audience that meant evacuating the hall and as a result Dex wasn’t in […]

It was a long question, it’s true.

London gardening. Bugloss weeps torn blue petals. New, secret frogs scatter, cover blown. Clean white guitar fingers scoured in aromatic earth. I leave this corner, fox and elves still secret here.

Fox on the lawn, bank holiday sun. Big old yawn, scratching his fleas.

We had popped in at the English Church on Saturday for coffee, and in the library I had spotted a little volume of Hemingway short stories that looked just right for the beach. But I’m not a member, and I’m not down in Menton often enough to join. One of the redoubtable Old Ladies of […]

We’ve started scattering the Numpt. Ed & H & D dropped a little into the flower bed at the English church near Pat, who has her own plaque, the size of a credit card on the coping of the stone at the base of the wall. Apparently the town council’s historic buildings policy now means […]