You may have noticed there was something of a blank here at Lucid Ephemera for a few weeks while I went off and did festive things and had a holiday. More details on Italians in puffy jackets and wild boar salami follow in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I hope all of you [...]
Archive for the ‘manor houses’ Category
2010 and 2011, thank you and hello
Posted in Aleppo, archaeology, architecture, Australia, autumn, Berlin, bread, British colonial mansions, cathedrals, chocolate, Christmas, churches, Crete, Cretins, Cyprus, Damascus, day trips, deer, Dodgy taxi drivers, driving, elbow, England, expat, fleas, food, Germany, Greece, history, Italy, Liverpool, manor houses, markets, Morocco, mosques, museums, odd hotels, Ottomans, Phillipine overseas domestic workers, post offices, Recalcitrant stereos, rowing, shopping, singing, smuggling, summer, Sunday, Syria, The Cyprus Question, The Mediterranean Middle Lane, tombs, tourism, travel, Turkey, Uncategorized, Venetians, Volkswagens, Volkswagons, weather, winter, wordless, work, working from home, Xania on January 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
First Frost
Posted in autumn, deer, manor houses on October 22, 2010 | 1 Comment »
The first frost. More than that: there is a layer of ice on the car windows that stubbornly resists my de-icer spray. We’ve been inching toward frost for weeks, the mild days turning into cold evenings and almost-freezing nights. In the early hours of this morning it arrived. The ice crystals make intricate, feathery patterns [...]
A Knightley Haunt
Posted in day trips, England, history, manor houses on September 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Blessed with a temporarily sunny day and encumbered with a desire to get out of the house, yesterday I ventured out on a jaunt into Derbyshire, this time to visit Kedleston Hall. The place is gorgeous. It has a spectacular art collection, an awe-inspiring domed entrance hall and a suite of rooms entirely covered in [...]
Eternal Love
Posted in churches, day trips, England, history, manor houses, tombs on September 7, 2009 | 4 Comments »
One of the things that I love doing when visiting anywhere in England is looking at the graves and tombs in and around old churches. Call me morbid, but I love the old headstones, some with inscriptions so worn they’re indecipherable. It makes me think about what we leave behind, and what the world will [...]
Blighty or Blighted
Posted in architecture, bread, deer, England, expat, food, manor houses, summer, travel on September 4, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Coming home after a trip away is sometimes a letdown. There’s a tired, Sunday-night feeling of coming back to normality. On other occasions a return to the warmingly familiar is fun. In this way we were quite looking forward to getting back to England, which is now home, if not home-home, which is on the [...]
Practical. Square. Good.
Posted in bread, chocolate, Germany, manor houses on September 1, 2009 | 2 Comments »
The chocolate bar that I bought in Germany was emblazoned with the phrase ‘Practical. Square. Good.’ As a marketing slogan for a bar of chocolate, it wouldn’t have been my first choice. But this particular bar of Ritter Sport was indeed all of those things – as well as being a mighty fine piece of [...]
Honourary Archaeologist
Posted in archaeology, Cyprus, manor houses, summer on July 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I haven’t posted here for several weeks because I’m in rural Cyprus doing the cooking for an archaeological dig. The cooking is going well, despite the often intense heat and rudimentary facilities. Our accommodation is a medieval building set around a large courtyard, and with all the mod cons of the thirteenth century; there is [...]
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know
Posted in day trips, England, food, history, manor houses, summer, tagged Byron, day trips, manor houses, National Trust, Newstead Abbey on June 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
If the Poet Lord Byron was odd, his uncle, the Evil Lord Byron, was completely nuts. He fought a duel, swords and all, with his cousin, and after winning was promptly tried for murder. He was also known for building a fort in front his house, and installing a cannon in it, which he would [...]
