Author: TrickyAndNIcky
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History lesson 3
7th July 2026 This is really just a brief coda to ‘History lesson 2’ from 15th May. Having just returned from Barbados we spent a couple of days in Kent and took in the amazing lavender fields at Castle Farm in Shoreham… …before embarking on a walk which took in Lullingstone Castle… …where we bumped…
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The Visitors
2nd July 2026 This album was a big seller when I was a Saturday boy in the record department at WHSmith in Wood Green in 1981: I’m not a particular fan of the group myself, but everyone loves them these days and they are certainly musical icons. Nicola tells an amusing tale of being laughed…
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Skips’R’Us
1st July 2026 A sense of déjà vu descends. We have form here. See ‘Many hands make light work’, 18.1.25. The original VIPs put in a shift and filled a decent sized skip. You know who you are 😎. Bravo! As I say, that skip was a decent size. You can get a hell of…
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The French Connection
28th June 2026 The veteran American director and actor Mel Brooks is 100 today. Every man in my age bracket was a teenager in the late 1970s/early 1980s and will never forget giggling hysterically at the farting scene in ‘Blazing Saddles’ or his turn as Louis XlV in ‘History of the World Part 1’. There…
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Working holiday
18th June 2026 In April 1990 my buddy Craig and I embarked on a year’s backpacking around the world. After three extraordinary months in southeast Asia we landed in the Lucky Country – Australia 🇦🇺 . We were the proud possessors of ‘working holiday visas’ which, as the name suggests, allowed us to work and…
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Under the sun
12th June 2026 ”We reach!” I always thought all West Indians said this when they were announcing “We’ve arrived!” but my local linguistic consultant tells me it might just be Trinis. Views from Bajans, Jamaicans etc are welcomed. But the message is clear: we’re back. We’ve never been in Barbados at this time of year…
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The power of language
24th May 2026 In November last year we found ourselves in Stratford-upon-Avon – see ‘Festive Spirit’, 16.12.25. Our gin’s great, by the way – come over for a snifter from our bottle at Pollards Mill! When planning our visit we naturally looked up what would be showing at the RSC when we were there. No…
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History lesson 2
15th May 2026 Last August I wrote two blog posts featuring lessons about history and geography. Each contained a fair bit of the other, and the geography post mentioned the Monarch’s Way – the long distance route taken by Charles ll into exile in France after his final defeat in the English Civil War. That…
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Five Years
1st April 2026 It might feel like this long since our last post, but that’s not the inspiration for the title of this one, nor is the opening track on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album. Our latest stint in Pollards Mill ended in early March and naturally there’s less to blog about when we’re not there,…
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From pillar to post
3rd February 2026 We introduced you to our new gates on 21st October last year (‘The Gates of Delirium’) and, inevitably, our minds soon turned to the state of the pillars on which they hang. They’re rock solid and vertical – which can’t be said about everything around here. One is taller than the other,…