When a writer complains about being overworked, it’s always in the spirit of someone complaining about the inconveniences your suffer from people falling in love with you all the time. So best keep quiet: besides, next week they’ll have decided that someone else is far sexier. But it has been a rather hectic few days,… [Read More]

We’d been to see Anoushka Shankar, me and my older son, the one who’s a musician. Anoushka, daughter of the great Ravi, was in stupendous form, playing sitar with a band that included tabla, the bigger double-ended drum called a mridanga, the flute called the bansuri, a drone and the reed instrument called the shenai… [Read More]

Wiik! Kruit-kruit! Kit-kit-kit. Kekechak! Ra-ga-ga-ra-ga-ga! Purrittittit! Chi-ti-ti-ti-ti-tk! I’m sure you have instantly recognised the voice of little tern from this. I got it from the nine-volume Birds of the Western Palaearctic. I heard at least some of these sounds and turned my head to see a merry party of ten or so little terns fishing… [Read More]

The poor bare forked dead willow has a new branch today. I looked up and its deeply familiar outline was changed. There is a new growth sprouting from the brusque yard-long horizontal. If I hadn’t known the damn tree so well – it gets around 100 gazes a day as I look up between sentences… [Read More]