We met Carole and Kevin in about 2005 when we were still in the first flush of our Italian adventure and they were running a holiday letting business.  We've always associated them with Italy and were frequent visitors to their trullo complex in Puglia and later to their townhouse in Nocera Umbra, to which they returned after it had been renovated some thirteen years after the earthquake that rendered it uninhabitable in 1997. Now we all find ourselves back in the UK, at least temporarily, and so we went up to see them in Kevin's old home town of Newcastle.  Sue and I both feel at home with Carole and Kevin, in part perhaps because we have a shared sense of adventure and a willingness to do things rather than just dream about them. Although we met in a new context we quickly settled down into our easy friendship, strolling around Lindisfarne and Newcastle, chatting eating and drinking.  On the Friday night we found a Malaysian restaurant in the City Centre which...

John Hartley was a big man in every sense of the word.  A man with a big appetite for life, lunch, booze and cigarettes.  He was my acting tutor at drama school in the early nineties.  John would sit, chain-smoking in the rehearsal room at East 15 watching our attempts at Chekhov with an expression both intense and inscrutable.  On one occasion one of us fluffed a line and John exclaimed exultantly: "At last something f*****g interesting's happened.  Just for a moment I actually got the impression that you weren't reading from a f*****g script!" John could be a harsh critic, although I think he saw it as being kind.  Acting is a brutal profession and if you can't embrace criticism and carry on in the face of near constant rejection you are dead.  He was especially eloquent on the subject of praise: "Praise f***ks you up darlings."  (Pause to take a deep drag on cigarette and exhale filling the room  with a yellow smog).  "Critici...

We bought mountain bikes a couple of weeks ago and sometimes I sling my bike in the back of the car when Sue goes to a school and then cycle home.  Today she dropped me in the middle of nowhere at 7.30am and I decided to go home on a route that took me via a river ferry.  I cycled to the ferry and joined the queue of early morning workers.  The tide was ebbing strongly and the ferry was making hard work of the crossing, it was pushed a long way down river before reaching our side and punching back upstream in the slack water by the bank. On the ferry I started taking photos when the Captain gesticulated at me from the bridge.  He looked very stern, but a deck hand motioned to me to go up to see him.  So I climbed up some rusty iron handholds and joined him. "Welcome" he beamed.  Looking desperately around for a present his hand lighted on some sachets of instant coffee which he thrust at me. "Drink!" "Thank you."  I said, dropping the sachets...

A couple of kilometres up the road from our house is the Saratok running track.  Three or four years old I am told and a really nice and well-drained surface, essential in this climate.  People go there in the morning and the evening when it is cool enough to run or walk round the track.  I am now a regular a few times a week. Sometimes there are thirty or forty people of various ages making their way round at varied speeds from a slow stroll to a fairly gentle trot.  Sometimes, for reasons I haven't yet worked out there is just me ... and the dog. The dog likes to keep an eye on what is going down at the track and likes to go for a snooze in one of the straights, usually in lane two.  Sometimes he raises an eyelid as I stagger past, panting and bathed in sweat.  Sometimes we exchange a glance which may or may not mean anything to either of us. Normally I do ten kilometres during which time the dog will shift his behind a couple of times and maybe g...

“Same day vaccinations” it said on the internet.  The clinic was in a big Victorian terrace on a main road near Leicester city centre.   I had to negotiate an entry phone and was then let into to a very smart suite of offices with soft carpets, swirling feature wallpaper and chandeliers.  The attractive young asian PA told me to fix myself a coffee and the Doctor would see me shortly.  Sure enough I was shown into the surgery a few minutes later, coffee in hand.  Behind an imposing desk lounged a young asian guy with slick black hair, an expensive shirt and a very personable manner. Talking through the options for vaccination he made me feel relaxed, despite the subject matter.  “Yes, I’d definitely get a rabies vaccination.  Trouble is there is not much of the post infection vaccine available these days and without you are dead, no question.”   Actually we couldn’t do that one as it needs a jab a week for three weeks.  But I settl...

This is Denise, my landlady during my four weeks in Brighton doing the “CELTA” English language teaching course.  The three people gathered with me round the dinner table are my fellow students: Ali from Dubai; Enrico from Trento in Northern Italy and; Natalia from Mexico. It seems strange to think that I knew none of these people four short weeks ago and now I feel like I’m leaving my surrogate family.  Denise is a devout Catholic with a mixed English/French background and political views somewhere to the right of Pope John Paul II.  She also has the proverbial “heart of gold”.  At seventy seven years of age and with a hip operation due in a few days, she looks after four students, including giving us all a hearty breakfast and a solid supper and doing our washing.  On top of this she has that wonderful knack of creating a chaotic, welcoming and homely atmosphere where people feel free to do as they wish.  And all for £115 per week.   She insisted o...

Returning from a cycle ride this morning I surprised our neighbor Erminia as she walked up our drive. "Docco!" She exclaimed with a broad smile. For Erminia my English name "Doug", ending as it does in a consonant, is profoundly unsatisfying and so I have been "Docco" practically from the moment we met six years ago. Suddenly our dog Milly trots out of the house barking hysterically whilst wagging her tail - her normal reaction to Erminia. This in turns brings Sue onto the terrace fresh from the shower with towels draped around her head and body. "Ciao Erminia" she cries, "how are you?" Erminia stumps her way up the drive with her old walking stick, falls onto a bench and gives her standard reply - "tired!" Erminia is in her eighties and has lived in our little hamlet since she got married more than sixty years ago. Her husband Paolo died a couple of years back, but she is the matriarch of a large family who all live ne...

We now have two animals. “Chiaro” the cat was in fact a sitting tenant when we arrived. Chiaro originally belonged to a Calabrian family, who rented our house until a couple of years before we bought it, and Chiaro had somehow stayed, fed occasionally on pasta by Erminia, who like so many country people has a love hate relationship with domestic pets, alternately making a fuss of Chiaro then chasing him with a broom. When we arrived and started giving him real cat food he decided to move back to our house pretty much full time, although the rule is he is not allowed inside. Chiaro is a big tomcat and a kind of sandy colour which matches the stonework of the house. I guess he is about five or six and this spring he had trouble coming to terms with the fact that he may no longer be the toughest cat on the block. Every night we would hear blood curdling yowlings and growlings and other signs of feline mayhem and in the morning Chiaro would come limping for his food, bloody and wit...