Lovin’ summer

Hague, Dawkins or Campbell? Not for me.



















And on that note, and on the high of doing a number two over at the redoubtable Norfolk Blogger’s blog, see you all again soon…

Joining me on the beach this year...

My alter ego over at Lib Dem Voice has compiled a list of some Lib Dem MPs’ summer reading suggestions. Feeling rather left out, I’m publishing mine here:

Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin - we’re told this is most assuredly not the seventh instalment of his superb Tales of the City series. Whatever, Maupin has perhaps the most acutely empathetic ear for dialogue of any living writer.

The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor - I don’t generally ‘do’ military history, but I’ll make an exception for this work, especially as I’m returning again to Spain in August.

The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown - I idly picked this up in Borders bookshop the other week. As a non-Royalist, I was surprisingly gripped by Tina’s friskily witty and judicious account.

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex von Tunzellman - as is traditional in such lists, I’m including one by a friend. But, seriously folks, the reviews are fantastic, and Alex is a scarily talented writer. Plus it’s only a tenner from Amazon.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling - I’m more excited than is seemly for a mature adult about the publication of the final Potter book. 21st July is blocked out in my diary as a reading day.

Dalziel & Pascoe - I’ve bulk-ordered the six novels I’ve not yet read in this fantastic detective series. Please don’t judge them by the appallingly hoky TV series (which not even Warren Clarke’s and Colin Buchanan’s fantastic performances can redeem) - these are intelligent, witty, deeply literary novels. I love ‘em.

Oh, and I guess I’ll give in and buy The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell, too.

Scenes from a Bank Holiday week-end

Very traditional, very British… Sunday afternoon was spent picnicking in Christ Church meadow (albeit eating tortilla and jamon, which is perhaps a little more recherché).

Half a century ago, this idyllic setting was the subject of a bitter planning wrangle, following the proposal by Thomas Sharp, in his 1948 report, Oxford Replanned, that an ‘inner relief road’ be built across the meadow.

The debate raged for a full two decades, before being finally squashed by, inter alia, the then Minister of Housing and Local Government, Dick Crossman, who was my predecessor (by several generations) as a councillor for Headington ward on the City Council.

Part of the fun is reclining by the meadow, and watching the tourists who’ve hired their punts at Magdalen Bridge struggle to control their craft.

Some take to it, like… erm… ducks to water. Others thrash and flail, slaloming from one side of the Cherwell bank to the other - pure sporting schadenfreude.

Such pleasures - together with the gleaming, dreaming spires - even allow you to forget the downsides of picnics: bugs, needing the toilet, and the fact that bright April sunshine isn’t all that warm.

With you in spirit

So this is where I was standing during the crucial Trident debate at the Lib Dems’ spring conference in Harrogate… Bruges.

Deliberately out of e-mail and phone contact for a long week-end, I didn’t discover the actual result of the debate til I returned home early Monday morning.

But I knew ‘the leadership’ hadn’t been defeated. How?

Because Trident was discussed on the BBC's Sunday AM newspaper round-up which I caught a few minutes of on satellite telly - and there was no mention of the Lib Dems. And we know that journos find debates and policies dull, but personalities and splits endlessly, pointlessly fascinating.

On a lighter note, here’s a rather more attractive pic from Belgium. Not too sure what folk would have been up to in Harrogate when I snapped this. But the law of averages suggests the bar was doing a roaring trade.

Scenes from the start of Christmas

Catching the train is when it starts for me.

Somehow - regardless of the railway’s attempts to put its passengers in a bad mood by jacking up the prices, cramming the carriages with cattle customers, and ensuring we’re all late for wherever we’re meant to get to - the mood is more cheery.

It’s one of the only occasions in the year you’ll be on public transport when almost everybody is heading for family and/or friends to begin their holiday.

I had a momentary panic yesterday. My iPod has decided to become erratic, telling me the battery is knackered when I’d only just charged it. In itself, that’s annoying. That it should give up the ghost five minutes before I’m about to board a train, and endure three hours of the ‘family carriage’ - the noise of which I can survive only with musical accompaniment - is not my idea of good irony.

(Thankfully, after a few minutes’ rest it got up enough puff to see out the rest of the journey ... before conking out again.)

Chugging into Newton Abbot (left) is when I know I’m on holiday, just half an hour from my parents’ home (or one hour, as First Great Western contrived it to be).

The whole journey had been swathed in a thick, ethereal mist - like something out of The Dark Is Rising - until we reached the coast, and the stretch of track that winds along the stunning Devonshire coast by Dawlish and Teignmouth. It’s a route I know well; but it still takes my breath away.

Last minute Christmas shopping is something I love. I’m sensible enough to have bought most gifts months weeks days beforehand - but nothing beats the slightly giddy, slightly frantic atmosphere of hunting for presents to beat a deadline.

And, almost excitingly, Plymouth’s city centre has had a makeover since last year, with the smart new Drake Circus shopping behemoth (right) replacing its drab predecessor - though, unfortunately, the contrast with the municipal greyness of its concrete neighbours is now quite painful.

It may not have been his most heinous of crimes, but the dreary and characterless architecture of post-war Britain is one that Hitler still inflicts on us today.