View last updated posts Tag : local life
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Last posts published
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Iced over
A favourite spot for outdoor swimming looked less than inviting today. Freezing temperatures didn't stop thousands of hardier souls taking to the water on Boxing Day, nor will it deter participants at the UK Cold Water Swimming Championships , at the unheated Tooting Bec Lido on 24 January.... Read more ...
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Shadows on the allotment shed wall
Once upon a time almost everyone could rent a patch at their local allotment garden – a haven of tranquillity where you could grow healthy food and enjoying working alongside your neighbours. In 1943 there were 1.4 million allotments in the UK but by 1993 there were just 300,000. In Lon... Read more ...
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'Cosy Coffee Shops' in Reading?
The county town of Berkshire a mecca for lovers of independently run coffee shops? Surely not. But a newish website has just proved otherwise. For decades the rulers of what I used to call the People's Republic of Reading devoted themselves to stripping the character out of the place. They... Read more ...
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By the lake
The water lapping the shore when the light was perfect at about 6pm on Friday. Read more ...
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Never shoot into the sun...
Maybe it's supposed to break the camera or something, but it seems to work for me. As well as taking these phone pictures I picked a bag of premature blackberries, but they lack sweetness and seem to be full of the heavy rain we've been having lately. What I really wanted to do was swim in the... Read more ...
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In the garden today...
...was this lovely comma butterfly ( Polygonia c-album ). Unlike many other butterflies, it stayed put when I started to take pictures with my phone, so I had plenty of time to get a reasonably good shot. At first its ragged appearance made me think it was near the end of its brief life ... Read more ...
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The elevation of St Boris of Henley
There's much chortling that around a quarter of London's electorate decided to make 'bumbler' Boris their Mayor on St Boris's Day. But how has the blonde bombshell served his Henley constituents and what will they do without him? In the Bulgarian Orthodox church at least, the anniversar... Read more ...
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What lies beneath
Live in a 400 year-old house and you grow accustomed to the closeness of the past. Reminders of those long gone are many. Ten generations born, living and dying here, each leaving their traces, some obvious, others more subtle. Work the garden and the soil gives up the stuff of others' live... Read more ...
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Bach tells 'the greatest story ever told'
JS Bach is often cited as the greatest ever composer and the St Matthew Passion as his greatest work. Setting the text of Chapters 24-27 of St Matthew's Gospel, it tells the story of Christ's last days up to the crucifixion. First performed on Good Friday in 1727 in the Thomas... Read more ...
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Earth moving for beginners
It started with a low, distant rumble, somewhere to the north. It was 1am and I was wide awake and I thought I could hear rocks being ground together somewhere far, far away. I was wrong. The sound was not man-made - it came from deep down beneath the earth's surface: it was an ancient and u... Read more ...