Search found 36 matches

by Donsimone
Wed Aug 29, 2018 9:22 am
Forum: Overseas and Travelling
Topic: Brittany?
Replies: 0
Views: 8026

Brittany?

Does anyone have some experience of living in Brittany which they'd be willing to share? I'm planning to rent there for a couple of months next summer in order to escape the incredible heat here in Italy. Any insight into places to search for accommodation - just my wife and myself - or any other u...
by Donsimone
Mon Aug 27, 2018 3:01 pm
Forum: Abuse cases and related discussions
Topic: Who Knew What?
Replies: 221
Views: 68798

Re: Who Knew What?

I very much doubt whether 'sanity' ever had anything much to do with any of it!
by Donsimone
Mon Aug 27, 2018 2:21 pm
Forum: Abuse cases and related discussions
Topic: Who Knew What?
Replies: 221
Views: 68798

Re: Who Knew What?

Lately the contemporary cultural conversation has come to regard as unpalatable what has really been an open secret since time immemorial - that putting people into situations of enforced intimacy breeds bad stuff. It doesn't matter whether it's the closed faith of a religion, the vaulting ambition...
by Donsimone
Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:35 am
Forum: General Chat - Non CH
Topic: Politics
Replies: 624
Views: 236089

Re: Politics

You get my vote Freaky boy - the corporate welfare state, crony capitalism - socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog for the rest of us can't be the way forward.
by Donsimone
Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:08 am
Forum: General Chat - Non CH
Topic: What moves you?
Replies: 12
Views: 5536

Re: What moves you?

Thanks for the tip. Early '70s prog, ironically, was my way in to classical at school - chapel was a dreadful turn-off, to this day the strains of a Bach tune sets my flesh crawling. People will remember ELP who successfully purloined Mussorgsky, Bartok, Janacek and Copland to create a variety of fr...
by Donsimone
Thu Mar 19, 2015 10:31 am
Forum: General Chat - Non CH
Topic: What moves you?
Replies: 12
Views: 5536

Re: What moves you?

Munich art museum and a Van Gogh 'Sunflowers' which beamed at me an overwhelming sense of intimate yet almost glacial beauty, reminding me that spacewalking is only one of many ways of touching the void. An elderly gent in the cemetery painstakingly watering what were clearly silk flowers - his memo...
by Donsimone
Thu Jan 08, 2015 11:10 am
Forum: General Chat - Non CH
Topic: Politics
Replies: 624
Views: 236089

Re: Politics

In reply to Donsimone. Dealing with the offshore tax havens is one; damping down damagingly speculative financial trades is another. What is the nature of the anti-European wedge in Italy, Donsimone? Shame the fox has been put in charge of the hen house - the Ruritanian Jean-Claude Juncker is thee ...
by Donsimone
Thu Dec 18, 2014 1:58 pm
Forum: General Chat - Non CH
Topic: Politics
Replies: 624
Views: 236089

Re: Politics

The optimist in me hopes for an imminent seachange in European politics as anybody can see that this menage-à-28 is not working. Italy, where I live, seems pretty emblematic of the intractability of the current woeful situation. What should be a massively prosperous nation has been impoverished by y...
by Donsimone
Mon Dec 15, 2014 2:06 pm
Forum: General Chat - CH Stuff
Topic: How Different Was Your Home Life From Your CH Life?
Replies: 50
Views: 13431

Re: How Different Was Your Home Life From Your CH Life?

A Missing Shade of Blue I pitched up with the mark of Cain – Michael Caine actually, complete with Sarf Lundin aksehn't. In Second Form Geography, peg-legged old salt Kit Aitken would promise a pre-decimal 1d 'prize' to dipthonged Londoners for correctly pronouncing the aspirated aitch , even if I'd...
by Donsimone
Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:35 pm
Forum: Stories, Reminiscing & Teacher/Pupil Memories
Topic: Gruesome Encounter of the Newsome Kind
Replies: 61
Views: 35508

Re: Gruesome Encounter of the Newsome Kind

While in the basement mooching around for a bottle of Valpolicella or somesuch, I not so long ago tripped over a forgotten cache of stored books – some Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury's 'The Illustrated Man', Wilfred Owen, Orwell, Mervyn Peake, Flann O'Brien, 'The Buddha of Surburbia' etc – when to m...
by Donsimone
Sat Aug 02, 2014 10:32 am
Forum: General Chat - CH Stuff
Topic: Death of Bomber Nicholson
Replies: 20
Views: 11372

Re: Death of Bomber Nicholson

Who could have lived through the Bomber 3A experience and forget it. Deeply stimulating and liberating stuff which I've has stayed with me all these years. Despite having stormed off from CH in a huff on the Lower Deps, I went back years later to ask him for a reference for a postgrad course which h...
by Donsimone
Mon Aug 26, 2013 4:49 pm
Forum: Stories, Reminiscing & Teacher/Pupil Memories
Topic: Gruesome Encounter of the Newsome Kind
Replies: 61
Views: 35508

Re: Gruesome Encounter of the Newsome Kind

You've put your finger on an interesting evolutionary pattern there, David. Perhaps we could engage in some plucky demystification of stereotypes and prejudices past and present along the lines of 'Surviving is not thriving'. Discuss in less than 200 words.... I don't claim to have an eagle's eye vi...
by Donsimone
Thu May 30, 2013 1:37 pm
Forum: Leigh Hunt Photos
Topic: Leigh Hunt House Photos...
Replies: 50
Views: 42427

Re: Leigh Hunt House Photos...

I read that he hadn't made it through the '80s - you wonder what drove him to perform the ultimate gesture of self-defeat. Always academically at ease, he had one of those superheated personalities that went beyond standard issue premonitional-but-petulant youth. I suspect that the accompanying tens...
by Donsimone
Tue May 28, 2013 2:30 pm
Forum: Leigh Hunt Photos
Topic: Leigh Hunt House Photos...
Replies: 50
Views: 42427

Re: Leigh Hunt House Photos...

More than Roy Wood, a gravity-defying coiffure undoubtedly brought on by fanatical Uriah Heep fandom - those were the air/hair guitar '70's days. I was more into Rory Gallagher myself... :rock: A dark hair horse lurking at the back on the right is the very tall Andrew Lane, son of the art master of ...
by Donsimone
Mon Apr 15, 2013 2:28 pm
Forum: Leigh Hunt Photos
Topic: Leigh Hunt House Photos...
Replies: 50
Views: 42427

Re: Leigh Hunt House Photos...

dsmg wrote:Donaldson wins in the hair stakes
Not known as 'Fuzz' for nothing.