After my Saturday run Sue and I got the train to Brighton and met up with Keith's sister Brenda and Jane, Alison and Graham, her old colleagues from Hargrave Park, where Sue first met Keith.  During brunch Brenda gave us each a small pot of Keith's ashes to do with as we wished and confirmed her intention to scatter a larger pot on the beach, Brighton being one of his favourite haunts. After brunch we wandered around the Lanes and Sue and I reminded ourselves why we like Brighton so much - a slightly louche London-on-sea, pretentious but able to take the piss out of itself and home, bless it, of Britain's first green MP.  It doesn't deserve to be stuck in the UK really, it should have itself towed into the middle of the English Channel and begin a new life as a cool version of Jersey.  I bought a pair of Doc Martins with part of Uccello's the Battle of San Romano printed on them, which seemed the right thing to do.  Then we made our way to the seafront, scrunchi...

Sue came over from Italy last weekend for a get-together in Brighton in memory of our friend Keith Ramptahal.  We stayed in Littlehampton in a tired B&B and on Saturday I went for a run along the coast to Angmering-on-sea. It was a very English scene on which to reflect about "Brexit" and this very peculiar little country that I come from.  There was a strong breeze behind me as I ran past neat semi-detached houses, across meadowlands and into secluded private housing estates.  Lots of tidy white people were walking their dogs plus the odd man in a cheap tracksuit nursing a can of strong cider. The return run was hard work in the face of the wind and I began to resent it as I plodded on with a forward lean.  Bloody wind, bloody Littlehampton, bloody country, bloody brexit.

On EU referendum day I had my first funeral at Boston Crematorium, the English heartland of Brexit, with a higher percentage of people who want Britain out of the EU than anywhere else in the country.  It was a damp, grey morning as I drove from Newark across miles of largely empty farmland.  As I pulled into the car park of a large Asda, the Boston Stump loomed out of the mist.  Driving on through the town I saw rows of neat terraced houses interspersed with Eastern European food stores. The crem. is a grim fifties edifice in some well-kept parkland.  I was shown into the Vestry and later given a quick tour of the chapel and shown the buttons for changing the music and closing the curtains.  I drove back to Newark at lunchtime, and in the afternoon picked up my motorbike from the garage and had a nice chat with the garage owner about bikes and touring and double-checking the bill he even found a mistake and knocked a few quid off.  Then I went to the P...

Sat on plane from Brindisi to Stansted, bored and tired.  Somewhere below through the clouds is a flat bit of France or Germany.  I'm only over for three odd weeks during which I have a funeral, a memorial and a wedding.  Also in two weeks I'm meeting Sue at Stansted so we can go together to a kind of memorial meet up in Brighton for our old friend Keith. Oh and there's the UK referendum on EU membership.  Reading the Guardian the chattering classes are suddenly in a panic as the polls swing towards Brexit from a comfortable remain lead a few weeks ago.  I find all this scary and disorientating.  I had complacently assumed that as the deadline loomed people's fear of change would widen the gap in favour of remain and this may still prove to be the case.  But I'm realising increasingly that there are a lot of angry and dispossessed people out there who pin their anger on immigration and see Brexit as some kind of solution. My reaction to all ...

I took this photo last week lying on our bed in the afternoon in a lovely little hotel in the centre of Peschici, a small port and resort on the tip of the Gargano peninsula in the north of Puglia. Since I got back to Puglia in early May we've been working hard getting our house and land ready for the summer, so we took a break for a few days to relax and recharge our batteries. It's only our second time in the Gargano, the first time being a day trip with Old Paolo and Erminia to St Giovani Rotondo, the centre of the Padre Pio industry not long after we bought the house in 2004. Although further north than our home it actually feels more remote, because it's far from the main autoroutes and regional airports. At the centre of the peninsula is the Foresta Umbra, an ancient woodland of oak, beech and pine to which wolves were reintroduced a few years ago.  We took a stroll in it for a couple of hours, enjoying the shade and the peace and feeling strangely reminde...

It's been a couple of months since we bought our apartment in Newark and I'm beginning to get a handle on the place.  From the windows of our apartment there's a good view of the main town-centre car park next to a bridge over the river Trent.  It's packed during the day and empties out completely after the bars and restaurants have closed around 11pm.  Now sunnier weather has arrived it's become a popular spot for bikers to come for a drink at the pub/barge moored next to the carpark.  I guess many of them are from the nearby city of Nottingham and they make me feel at home here. Also from our windows we can see the massive spire of the church of St Mary Magdalene which was finished in 1350 and is a landmark for miles around.  It's strange to think it's been there for nearly eight hundred years and sometimes one can hear, that most English of sounds, the pealing of church bells, crashing out from its bell chamber. Strange as well to think that at the ...

It's more than six months since I last wrote up my blog. I've thought a lot about why I stopped and it's definitely connected to dad's death and my leaving of my father's house, physically and emotionally.  At one level I never wanted dad to read my blog, but in another way it actually was for him.  I was accounting for my actions to my parents, like I'd done throughout my life.  Do we all do this or am I queer?  An issue I've come to reflect on in a more general sense since dad died. I shall tell the story of the last few months in pictures. In September 2015 I moved from dad's bungalow to temporary digs in Lincoln with Harry and Zack and their delightful dog Oscar, with whom I enjoyed many excellent runs along the banks of the River Witham. In November Sue finished her contract in Borneo and returned to Puglia, where after a gap of some years we finally did our olive harvest together again.  Also that month I completed a Humanist weddings c...