A Country Diary – 49

Posted in Tom Hodgkinson’s Country Diary on 16 November 2006

16 November 2006

MY BRASSICAS are disappointing me. There is one brussels sprout plant which has reached a reasonable height but the other two are barely a foot off the ground. Then there are the broccoli plants which I put …

A Country Diary – 48

Posted in Tom Hodgkinson’s Country Diary on 25 September 2006

21 September 2006

Tom by Fire

IT’S BEEN three months since the last country diary. How slack I have been. Must try harder. I resolve henceforward to write them weekly. The summer was long and hot and we had a great visit from …

A Country Diary – 47

Posted in Tom Hodgkinson’s Country Diary on 28 July 2006

3 July 2006

TODAY I wandered though my raised beds in my little edible garden, marvelling at the bounty hanging from the branches, and those lines from Andrew Marvell’s The Garden came to mind: “The nectarine and curious peach, into …

A Country Diary – 46

Posted in Tom Hodgkinson’s Country Diary on 7 June 2006

7 June 2006

THANK GOD for the hot weather at last. I was beginning to grow extremely miserable. The endless winter was very depressing. Is this strange weather something to do with global warming and climate change? I sometimes ask …

In Conversation with Michael Palin

Posted in Conversations on 31 May 2006

From Idler 37, 2006

Tom Hodgkinson meets the amiable comedy genius turned world traveller and self-confessed man without direction.

WE APPROACHED Michael Palin as we’d seen him being interviewed saying that he’d lived in the same small house since 1968. …