One of the good things about having a dog in lockdown is that you get out and meet people.  Poppy has made lots of friends on our regular walks around town and this is Charlie, one of her favourites.  Charlie comes to the riverside walk on our side of Newark most mornings on his mobility scooter.  He exercises his dodgy knee and feeds the birds (and the rats).  Poppy is always pleased to see him and he her.  Over the months we've passed the time of day together I've learned that he used to be in the Pioneer Corps and that he buys and sells antiques.  He also knows a lot about the town and its inhabitants.  Sometimes he gets to know one of the transient rough sleepers who turn up on the benches on the riverside walk from time to time and he has been known to bring them sandwiches. Then there's Ruby, a lovely black poodley looking dog who has similar energy levels and who she loves to wrestle.  Ruby's owner Judy lives with her partner in a house ove...

November and December rolled on in much the same way as the rest of 2020, with our lives narrowed and simplified by Coronavirus.  I took this photo on one of my morning walks with Poppy, the weather bright and misty for a change, instead of grey and damp.  Sometimes I really miss those bright dry winter days in Puglia, where despite the cold wind if you can find a sheltered spot the sun starts to warm your bones. Every day I check out the infection and deaths data on the UK Covid dashboard and the international one maintained by the New York Times.  As the number of cases climbed relentlessly from early December it seemed inevitable there would be a new lockdown and Sue and I cancelled already tentative plans to spend Christmas in Devon with her sister Julie.  In the end we stayed home and had a Christmas not unlike the last one, gorging on duck, Netflix and Quality Street. Poppy has been oblivious to it all and such an enormous psychological asset over the last few ...

In early December Sue got news that her friend Annisha, who was one of the feisty group of teachers she mentored in Sarawak, was coming to the UK for a holiday with her daughter and her cousin Leeza and her family.  We decided to meet them all in London and to take them out for lunch as a way of repaying a tiny fraction of the hospitality Annisha gave to us during our stay in Saratok in 2011-13.  We met them all at the V&A and then had the tricky task of finding somewhere to take seven people who only eat halal in Knightsbridge a few days before Christmas.  As luck would have it we found a Lebanese restaurant with an enterprising Russian manager who organised a fixed price lunch for us around a big back-room table.  We had a really convivial meal and Sue and Annisha's bond, was instantly renewed, as it had been when we met for that wonderful barbecue by the South China Sea in February 2018.  We had another quiet Christmas, away from the stresses of a big fam...