Category Perspective
My sense of scale
It would seem my sense of scale could use a little fine-tuning. When I saw this piece hanging at the art fair yesterday (in a cavernous former agricultural hall), I would have described it as medium-sized, perhaps even on the smaller side of medium. But now that it’s in the flat, that doesn’t seem quite […]
Stowe
As impressive as the gardens and park at Blenheim were, the ones at Stowe (which Capability Brown did early in his career) blew me away. I loved the vastness of the views, which were designed to give the impression of going on forever without interruption (kind of like infinity pools today). And I loved how […]
Blenheim Palace
The morning after the Chelsea Flower Show I drove out to Oxfordshire in search of some of the masterpieces of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the 18th Century landscape designer who perfected the English “Landscape Style” and is considered by many to be the Shakespeare of gardening, so great has been his influence through the centuries. Before […]
Does this count as adding to the “patina of age”?
Dang it. Apparently this is what happens when your 18th Century china taps the granite countertop in just the wrong way. I could be devastated and flagellate myself for not having wrapped it in bubble tape or hung it safely on the wall. But that would be no fun and besides I need something to […]
Stirling!
On Saturday morning I checked out of the hotel early and picked a car from near the Glasgow train station. From there it was a quick, sunny drive to Stirling. Did I say it was sunny? This weekend is the best weather we’ve had all year! Anyway, Stirling is a pretty little town full of […]
Finally inside St. Paul’s
I have this philosophy that I should never see absolutely everything there is to see in a place. Setting aside that it would be impossible to actually do that (except, maybe, in Winnemucca), this philosophy means that there’s always a reason to come back One of the “obvious” things that I’ve never done in all […]
Taxes and hot chocolate
Last year I resolved to do at least one interesting thing every weekend I spend in London. Well, during the season of tax preparation and writing endless performance reviews, the bar for what counts as “interesting” is apparently quite low. This weekend drinking fancy French hot chocolate out of Danish porcelain while sorting through expenses […]
North Head
New Year’s Eve Day was a bit of an odd one. It felt like a holiday but all the fun wouldn’t start until night-time. It was also our last full day in Sydney, and Amanda and I wanted to use it to do the last odds-and-ends that had caught our curiosity but not been done […]
Last morning in York
I didn’t have high expectations for today. Reason being that I remember last year’s bank holiday being kind of a bummer with most shops being closed and the town feeling completely dead. Turns out that may have been because I was in Dover and not somewhere (anywhere) else. I basically expected York (and London when […]
Lovely Paris
Yesterday I attempted to work more or les normally, though since my Parisian colleague was in Luxembourg for meetings I opted not to actually go into the office. Instead Amanda and I found an “anti cafe” where you pay by the hour to sit and work for as long as you like with all the […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 