A recent meeting with a local travel journalist and a remark from a friend more than 40 years ago who both recommended Eric Newby’s The Last Grain Race, motivated me to request the book from the library. Having finished it, I want to add my enthusiastic comments to the thousands of similar commendations over the [...]
‘From Me to You’
The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby
Click the title above to read the complete post. Posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010The Toy Train on Your Carpet
Click the title above to read the complete post. Posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010by Barbara Durlacher Who remembers playing with Dinky Toys, Meccano or the wonderful Hornby Trains? I guess that thousands now in their 60s and 70s recall with nostalgia these remarkable inventions that came to epitomise the peak of British toy production between the end of the First World War and the 1950s. During this [...]
‘Shopmobility’ In Oxford
Click the title above to read the complete post. Posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009by BARBARA DURLACHER Oxford is a vibrant mixture of university and commerce and swarms with tourists at all seasons of the year. Many are old students of the beautiful colleges, or visitors from foreign parts wanting to discover what makes the two ‘big’ university towns, Oxford and Cambridge, so special. With a wide range of [...]
Gauteng’s “Gautrain”
Click the title above to read the complete post. Posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009by Barbara Durlacher Gauteng is the smallest province in South Africa, with only 1.4% of the land area, but it is highly urbanised and, as of 2007, has a population of over 10.5 million, making it the most populous province in South Africa. It was formed from part of the old Transvaal after South Africa’s [...]
The Owl House
Click the title above to read the complete post. Posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009by Barbara Durlacher Deep in the mountains, in the Cape Province of South Africa, there is a tiny isolated village on the edge of the Great Karroo called Nieu-Bethseda. Some years ago, a lonely woman called Helen Martins died in this little village, but not before her strange creation, “The Owl House”, brought her [...]
A Craze Called Tulipmania
Click the title above to read the complete post. Posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009by Barbara Durlacher Who has heard of tulipmania, the disease that hit Holland in the 17th Century? It started with the arrival of the first tulip bulbs from Asia Minor, although the Crusaders are credited with discovering the bulbs much earlier. When these bulbs reached Holland, rich merchants and burgers who had never seen this exotic [...]
Three In a Boat and Off to Sea
Click the title above to read the complete post. Posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009by Barbara Durlacher I’m not a sailing type of person, far from it—I’m nervous on small boats. I loved the huge Union Castle ships that used to commute every week between the UK and SA (and for those readers unaware of my location, I live in Johannesburg, South Africa) and I did a number of [...]