I Do Like A Plan!

December 18, 2025 / fgrtommo / 2 Comments

One of the things that occasionally frustrates Jane, my wife, is how I love to stick to routines. I’m not good with the unpredictable and the unexpected. Surprise visitors, sudden changes to imminent diary dates, unbidden moves of items from one storage location to another, furniture moves, unnecessary changes to mobile phone features; all tend to cause me more anxiety than they should, especially as they are trivial first-world problems and my wife loves them all.

I think that my craving for plans to achieve calm routines is why my career went best when I was in operational information technology. There, the reliability of day-to-day computer services is critical. Having computer services working smoothly day after day was a key aim – not least because running computer services is cheaper that way. Changes had to be managed very carefully and if an anomaly happened then all efforts were made to ensure they didn’t happen again. Plans and routine were lovely then and I still hanker for them.

Fortunately, especially since my retirement, my wife jolts me out of this way of being so I am forced to stay on my toes. She will be the one to suggest that we go to a different pub for our usual Sunday pint and crossword. She will change the drawer contents around in the kitchen so I can’t find anything for a few days. She will poke me into holidays and outings. I think I am better at embracing, and even instigating, change than before – for example, my cooking skills and bravery are vastly improved from a few years ago – but it is my wife who tends to really try new things.

Of course, external events also push me off my routine and disrupt our plans. COVID almost derailed our family Christmas in 2020 and it did ultimately erase our plans to walk the North Devon/Cornwall Coastal Path earlier that year. The weather has also intervened to prevent or near-ruin other holidays in the past.

*^{Opening The Bedroom Blinds To The Sort Of Winter Sunrise And Weather I Like!}*

Increasingly too, as I get older, I’m conscious that health issues can mess up the best laid plans and prevent implementation of my normal routines. For example, I hate it when an arthritic joint prevents me from walking comfortably into town to get the newspaper and daily shopping. Last month, the blow up of my ankle problem took me off my feet for a few days and this month, a bout of orbital cellulitis (an infection of the tissue around the eyes) did the same. Anyone would be annoyed at these unplanned health issues but I feel my anxiety about them is amplified somehow by my feeling of missing out on my usual pattern of life.

Those ‘outages’, as we called computer service failures in my working life, help me appreciate the days when I can just get on with the routine and think about plans relatively proactively and calmly. ‘Seize the day’ as Jane often tells me. I need to do that more.

The bones of our plans for Christmas and the New Year are pretty much in place and, while weather and health may, of course, disrupt them, I’m very happy with what is in store. We kick off with carols in a local church then dinner at ours with Jane’s siblings. Then Christmas Day will be with Second Grandchild (SG), his parents and his other grandparent. SG is a very happy little boy by nature and I can imagine he is going to be beside himself with Christmas cheer – while not yet fully understanding many of the related concepts.

Boxing Day will be just Jane and I – for the first time ever, I think, we will be on our own. I am hoping for a sunny, crisp, wintery day and a long walk to a local pub for a leisurely lunch.

*^{Winter Sunset At Ruskin Mill (Jane’s Photo)}*

Then we are off to Belfast to see Youngest Son and his wife. To round out the family tour, we are then in Edinburgh for four weeks during which another Scottish grandchild should arrive.

We were last in Edinburgh for First Grandchild’s (FG) fourth birthday. As usual, we had a great time as we mixed family socials with art and nature. Eldest Son and his wife always provide amazing hospitality and it was lovely to see how FG had developed since we last saw him in the summer. His sense of fun combined with his determination and focus on detail were brought out by some of the presents he got for his birthday. It is clear that he is going to love ‘LEGO®’!

The Water Of Leith - Very Full During Our November Visit to Edinburgh — *^{The Water Of Leith – Very Full During Our November Visit to Edinburgh}*

The arrival of FG’s new sibling in January is going to colour, enliven and warm our visit next year. We had hoped to repeat what we did early in 2025 (without, this time, Jane breaking her shoulder!) but the flat we had rented then and booked for this visit was unexpectedly withdrawn from Airbnb last week – a very irritating imposed change of plan!

We have rebooked elsewhere (inevitably at a higher cost….) and are looking forward to our time in Edinburgh enormously. We just need to complete the plans for our schedule of trips, restaurants and art intake for the time we are there. I do like a plan!

Reading Not Walking

November 12, 2025 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Since retiring, I have loved spending time walking around our local area. I have done so every day when we haven’t been away from home. Generally, I will walk into town in the morning for the newspaper and daily shopping. Then I will often venture out for another walk in the afternoon.

On Tuesdays I will usually walk into Stroud to work at the Food Bank and, if there is a mid-week home game at Forest Green Rovers Football Club, will also walk to and from that. Those days see me doing almost 30,000 steps. On average, I have managed (often quite hilly) 15,000 steps a day since retiring. That, alongside some gardening, constitutes my main exercise.

*^{Autumn Walk. Ledgemore Bottom, Horsley, Gloucestershire}*

We are lucky that a plethora of footpaths in the area provides a large variety of routes to take to the shops or to the football ground or just as extra excursions through local fields and woods. It is particularly fortunate that Ruskin Mill College allows pedestrian access through their landscaped grounds between our village and Nailsworth, the nearest town. Further variety is provided by the seasons and this walk is especially uplifting at the moment as the trees turn to autumnal brown, yellow and red.

*^{Ruskin Mill College Grounds. Pretty Even In Autumn Rain}*

But all this walking takes up time. It’s time well spent for me; I love the outdoors, being in nature and happening to bump into friends on the way. I’ve enjoyed walking so much that, until this week, I hadn’t really thought about this consumption of time and what else I could do with the few hours a day I have spent walking.

What triggered me thinking about this time was a big flare up of a problem I have had for several months – off and on – with one of my ankles. I was most of the way to my weekly stint at the Stroud Food Bank when my ankle seized up. I pressed on and the ankle eased up a bit but then got a lot more painful. I bumbled my way through the shift, got Jane to pick me up afterwards and then spent 10 hours moaning and groaning about the pain (I’m not good with pain…)

I spent the next few days avoiding much movement. There was no thought of any substantial walking while my ankle settled down and, suddenly, I had several more hours to fill. I started reading.

*^{Walking Going Of A Cliff Edge (And A Careful Recovery Since)}*

I got up to date with a hardcopy of The Economist which Middle Son gets for me (very generously) every week on the back of his digital subscription. For the first time I could remember, my digesting of the content got ahead of publication and I was willing the next edition to arrive early. I read The Guardian daily from front to back (I still prefer hard copy; old habits die hard). And then I picked up the excellent novel (Long Island by Colm Toibin) I have been reading very slowly for weeks and finished it in a couple of days.

I ordered two more books and have started one at a pace unheard of before my ankle forced me to sit on the sofa rather more. I’ve remembered how much I like a good book and, even if my ankle recovers fully, I’m going to walk a bit less and read a lot more. That feels like a particularly attractive option as winter approaches, the days get shorter and the weather becomes less inviting.

*^{Batsford Arboretum, North Cotswolds}*

Of course, in between the routine walking over the last few weeks and before the ankle blow-up, there have been other highlights. On one sunny day recently, we went out to Batsford Arboretum in the North Cotswolds. Not surprisingly given the time of year and the weather, the arboretum was popular and some areas were quite crowded. Nonetheless, it is wonderful at this time of year. The mature trees were full of beautiful autumn shades and there were surprisingly big vistas across Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.

Batsford House can be seen from the arboretum but is not open to the public. However, within the grounds of the main house is a pleasant church, a museum of old gardening implements and a busy garden centre. We visited each only briefly and left for worthy, organic, vegetarian lunch at Abbey Home Farm on the way home.

*Batsford Arboretum Garden Implements Museum*

Batsford Church — *Batsford Arboretum Garden Implements Museum*

Two other memorable but more local events during the last few weeks have been a Diwali celebration in our local church and a local concert. The Diwali celebration was a second excuse in recent months to get dressed up in the Indian clothing we bought for a wedding of a friend in India almost a decade ago. It was a joyful event with people of all ages learning and performing Gujarati stick dancing, good music, drink and food, and a lot of local chatter. It is wonderful that we have people in such a small community prepared to organise such involving events.

The gig we went to was by This Is The Kit who we have seen before. They were supported by a band called Small Plant. They were perfect for a slightly out-there venue like the Goods Shed in a rather bohemian town like Stroud. Their first two songs were about propagating seedlings and making sourdough bread. They were unusual but we were pleased when they gave way to This is The Kit.

This Is The Kit Headlining At The Goods Shed, Stroud — *Small Plant At The Goods Shed, Stroud*

I really love This is The Kit’s music and, despite the lead guitar being occasionally a little over-dominant, they were, again, very good to watch and hear. Kate Stables, who leads the band, is a very personable and extremely talented musician. I was humming the tunes for days afterwards. Now I’m spending more time on the sofa, I can listen to them at home a little more too.

Art in Bilbao

October 29, 2025 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

The attraction of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum was the main reason for us choosing to visit Bilbao. It is certainly the main tourist magnet in the city and a centrepiece that dominates views downstream from the Old Town and from the slopes to the north of the city. We visited it straight after breakfast on our first day and, after a quick wander around the amazing building, were ready for entry at opening time.

Fortuitously and a little randomly, we went straight to the top floor with a plan of working our way down. That avoided the initial rush of visitors and enabled us to visit Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Infinity Mirrored Room’ before any queue had built up. Jane knew what to expect but I didn’t and when we got inside the room containing the work, I was taken aback. Unfortunately, I then spent more time posing for a picture of the two of us in the mirrors than understanding what I was looking at before we were ushered out with our visiting time having expired. Our visit made for an interesting photo though….

After that rather helter-skelter experience, we were able to take our time perusing the top floor. It became clear that some of the permanent collection was not on show at this time. While that was disappointing, there was plenty to see.

*^{Views From Inside, And Of The Inside, Of The Guggenheim}*

Much of the space on the first floor was taken up by an exhibition custom-made for the Guggenheim by American artist Barbara Kruger called ‘Another day. Another night’. This was dominated by multiple words and phrases stuck to the walls, ceilings and floors. These were in Spanish (not unreasonably given we were in Spain!) so I absorbed the overall effect rather than the meanings. Elsewhere there were video artworks that probed the ambiguity of word meanings and one of these was a rather timely and captivating analysis of the words (and their imagined alternatives) in the US Constitution.

Another temporary exhibition by Sky Hopinka called ‘No Power’ was also a series of videos but I confess I didn’t stay to the end.

Better, I thought, were the large spaces devoted to variety of artists’ works from the permanent collection though none really gripped me. The flower sculpture, ‘Puppy’ by Jeff Koons at the entrance to the Guggenheim was undergoing renovation but another of his works was inside alongside art by Jean-Michel Basquiat and a number of artists I hadn’t heard of before. There was also a typically large painting by Anselm Kiefer who is one of my favourite artists (though this one was a rather dull compared to others I have previously enjoyed).

Familiar Territory - Anselm Kiefer's The Paths Of World Wisdom' — *^{Familiar Territory – Anselm Kiefer’s ‘The Paths Of World Wisdom’}*

The best exhibit for me was the huge composite sculpture by Richard Serra called ‘The Matter of Time’. It occupies a vast dedicated space on the ground floor of the Guggenheim and was great fun to walk through and around. The balcony above provided an opportunity to take in the scale and entirety of the work while close inspection of the surfaces of the sculpture showed fascinating differences on colour and texture of the Corten (or weathered) steel of which it is made. It’s a highly memorable aspect of the Guggenheim.

As we emerged from the Guggenheim, we experienced one of the periodic ‘fog sculptures’ designed by Fujiko Nakaya. For a few minutes, the water and promenade next to the museum fills with a mist. Walking through this is an interesting experience and it creates some ghostly views of the museum and its surrounds.

*^{Fujiko Nakaya Fog Sculpture At The Guggenheim}*

We then walked along the river bank past one of Louise Bourgeois’s Spiders (see below) and made our way to the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.

This gallery has a lovely Art Deco façade which appeared to be undergoing some restoration. Inside, all was peaceful and spacious and I really enjoyed the visit.

The entrance hall has a wide variety of work which, most interestingly, contained Richard Serra’s model for ‘The Matter of Time’ sculpture we had just seen in the Guggenheim. It was a little weird to see the same work we had just experienced in the Guggenheim on such a smaller scale.

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Including The Model Of 'The Matter Of Time' By Richard Serra — *^{Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Including The Model Of ‘The Matter Of Time’ By Richard Serra}*

The highlight of the Fine Art Museum was a large exhibition of work by Georg Baselitz, a German artist. I had only vaguely heard of him before; indeed, I had seen and liked a couple of his works that we had seen earlier in the day in the Guggenheim. Here was a very large collection of his portraits.

*^{Paintings By Georg Baselitz, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum}*

These were mainly of people portrayed either upside down or on their side. Many appeared as figures akin to skeletons. Some had been painted while a disabled Baselitz scooted across the canvas in his wheelchair thereby creating strange tyre track markings across the canvas. This was initially all a bit disorienting – I think that was Baselitz’s objective – but as we walked from huge room to huge room, I got in tune with his paintings and really enjoyed the collective feel of them.

As we left the museum with our culture fix complete, and still two whole days in sunny Bilbao to go, we felt very satisfied with our choice of Bilbao as a city to visit.

Enjoying Bilbao

October 27, 2025 / fgrtommo / 4 Comments

I love a good ‘city-break’. We have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed many over the years. Some of the best city-breaks have been in the smaller cities of Europe rather than the largest; I like their size and the fact that one can see most of the city by just walking about; my aging legs still allow me to do that. Our latest city visit was to Bilbao in the Basque area of northern Spain and it was a very successful trip.

*^{The Guggenheim From A Bridge Across Ria De Bilbao}*

The logistics worked (thank goodness the threatened French air-traffic controllers strike was called off at the last moment), the hotel was comfortable, the weather was lovely and Bilbao was interesting and studded with very good bars, cafes and sights to see. Bilbao is on the Ria de Bilbao just downstream of the confluence of the rivers Nervion and Ibaizabal and the bridges across it and the steep sides of the valley it cuts through, provide a number of vantage points for lovely views of the city.

*^{In The New Town: Church of San Jose de la Montana de los Reverendos Padres Agustinos. Bilbao. (A Very Long Name And Very White)}*

It seemed to me that the centre of city has three main elements: the Old Town, the 19^th century planned grid structure of streets to the west and, a little further downstream, the modern restorations of old port areas (that continue all the way down to the still thriving port area on the coast). We spent much of our time in the Old Town but our modern hotel was amongst the grid like streets nearby and was conveniently quiet in addition to being centrally located.

*^{Night-time Bilbao (Ria De Bilbao and Theatre)}*

A key factor in choosing to visit Bilbao was our desire to see the Guggenheim Museum which is perhaps the centrepiece of the city and much visited by tourists from all over the world. It is indeed a remarkable building and I’ll cover our visit to it, and to the nearby Fine Arts Museum, in a separate post. There was much else to see and do and just walking around in the sunshine helped us absorb the feel of the city and the underlying strength of local pride in the Basque/Biscay culture. Our visit coincided with Spain’s National Day and we saw a couple of noisy street celebrations.

Part of that Basque (and Spanish) culture is the sociability of the people and their propensity to sit in bars and chat. There are hundreds of bars but, in the Old Town especially, it was difficult to find an outside seat because they were all so popular. The only workable strategy to getting a seat was often to order a drink and stand for a while until a table was vacated. Many were doing that but we lacked the patience and generally kept walking until we found a couple of adjacent seats by chance (or gave up!)

We did have some good suggestions for cafes and bars to try from Middle Son’s (MS’s) fiancée and we managed most of them. The best we experienced were Baster near the Cathedral and Ekain in the main square, Plaza Nueva. Both had excellent pintxos which are little snacks that bars sell to help prolong the bar-side drinking and conversations.

Jane also found two incredibly good breakfast places. Cafe Originale was a typical Jane choice of minimal décor, clean lines and excellent granola and yogurt (though I chose a filling savoury mix). .

Cokooncafe was something else! More than half the indoor space was taken up by seven chefs preparing immaculate looking breakfasts. Watching the preparation was almost as good as eating the food and it reminded me of the brilliant TV drama series The Bear – especially Series 3 where the focus is on learning and delivering on being a top-rated restaurant. The food, in truth, was a little too sweet to be an ideal breakfast but it was incredible experience. We ‘did’ both Café Originale and Cokooncafe twice and loved them but I will remember Cokooncafe especially for a very long time.

*^{Crazy-Good Breakfasts In Bilbao (Originale and Cokoon)}*

After going up the Artxanda Funicular to the views across the city from Artxanda Park, we ate tortilla at the apparently famous but remarkably unassuming Bilba (another of the MS fiancée recommendations which paid off). After this, the big breakfasts and the variety of pintxos, we didn’t feel much like a restaurant dinner in the evenings. Liquid dinners largely sufficed and I found the local ‘brown’ beers very satisfactory.

I went off twice on my own to explore Bibao. I am so pleased that I went to the Itsasmuseum (Maritime Museum). This provided a well laid out (with English translations) exhibition of the history of Bilbao from the point of view of its seafaring past, its port management and the Basque fishing industry. I loved the antique maps on show. They reminded me of the trips my Dad and I made in my youth to shops selling such maps.

*^{Itsasmuseum, (Maritime Museum), Bilbao}*

The old maps were a key part of the museum’s attempt to illustrate the progression of the growth of Bilbao in fits and starts from medieval times. The exhibits charted the industrial revolution, the 20^th century industrial decline, the massive floods (in 1983), separatist and joblessness riots, and the recent emergence of renewable industries and tourism.

Bilbao is actually many miles inland from the coast and the estuary that joins it to the Bay of Biscay has had to be completely re-engineered to enable sea trade and, ultimately, the rapid 19^th century development of the city. The previously huge mining, metal and ship building industry has now almost gone but the port out near the coast is busy and the city itself is a hive of activity.

The transformations Bilbao has been through were underlined by an exhibit by Esther Pizarro called ‘Skin of Light’. It was a combination of a model of the city and a video. The model was lit in different colours as the video of the recent history of Bilbao played out. I confess to being quite moved by the hopefulness the work exuded. The whole visit to the museum was well worthwhile and it helped create a context for what I saw in the Bilbao streets.

'Skin Of Light' BY Esther Pizarro, Itsasmuseum, Bilbao — *^{Two Of The Phases Of ‘Skin Of Light’ By Esther Pizarro, Itsasmuseum, Bilbao}*

On another excursion to the south of the Old Town, I encountered grittier streets. Parque Miribilla offered some good views north to the city centre and the walk along the river was interesting. Then, in the midst of some mid-rise social housing, I found a remnant from Bilbao’s industrial past; an old furnace attached to a mine that produced iron, that had been restored and surrounded by modern artworks. Seeing the furnace off the beaten track was a nice surprise before a stroll back into the city past sunset-bathed San Anton Church and to another crowded riverside bar.

On The Walk From Parque Miribilla To St Anton's Church — ^{On The Walk From Parque Miribilla To St Anton’s Church}

One other MS fiancée recommendation was to take a break from the city to visit Mundaka just over an hour out of the city by train or bus and on the north east coast. The weather was again sunny and warm and it was a perfect adjunct to walking the streets of Bilbao. The town is on another estuary with a sand bank which apparently creates excellent surfing conditions.

We saw plenty of surfers and paddleboarders amid the superb views across the estuary. We walked to the little fisherman’s church to look across the Bay of Biscay and then found a seat in an (inevitably) packed bar to snack and drink more strong beer. Visiting Mundaka was a great trip out for a morning and a chance to see a pretty, old coastal resort and semi-rural and rural Basque country on the way.

Bilbao proved to be a good choice for a very enjoyable city-break. I look forward to the next one.

Friends

October 8, 2025 / fgrtommo / 5 Comments

A couple of recent events have got me thinking about friends. Friendship is a nebulous and sometimes transitory thing. I looked up a definition on Wikipedia:

Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between people. It is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an “acquaintance” or an “association”, such as a classmate, neighbour, coworker, or colleague.

Although there are many forms of friendship, certain features are common to many such bonds, such as choosing to be with one another, enjoying time spent together, and being able to engage in a positive and supportive role to one another.

Using that definition, I can see that I have been fortunate and have had a lot of friends in my life. I’ve been supported by, and enjoyed time with, friends at school, university, work and, now, in retirement. I have not felt the need for a lot of friends at any one time. I seem to prefer relatively deep friendships with a few rather than broad but shallower relationships with many.

Painting Depicting Friendship By Samuel Peploe (Scottish Colourist We Encountered In an Exhibition Of Scottish Colourists Earlier This Year) — *^{Painting Depicting Friendship By Samuel Peploe (Scottish Colourist We Encountered In An Exhibition at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh Earlier This Year)}*

Having said that, two of my biggest life regrets are to have failed to keep in touch with any school friends and not making the most of a network of colleagues at work. I would like to know what some of my best mates at school are doing with their lives now and whether we still have things in common. And putting more effort into maintaining a network of work colleagues would have made my life in jobs, and between jobs, a little easier and, perhaps, more rewarding.

Two of my four main friends at university have died recently. The preparation for and conduct of a memorial service for one of these a few weeks ago, has been one of the events that has got me contemplating the value and meaning of friendship. Indeed, these deaths got me thinking more about mortality as well as friendship.

The remaining two best friends from my university era and I got together in London for lunch and a few beers to discuss our prospective speeches at our friend’s memorial service. There was a lot of catching up on what we were each doing, a bit of nostalgia and many funny reminiscences. But what struck me most was that, despite not meeting either of these guys for many months, we slipped into a shared history and conversation as if we talked together all the time.

We have been in contact with each other with varying degrees of intensity over 50 years and there have been many events together over that time. However, the other surprising thing for me was how much of that shared experience I have forgotten. As the old stories came out over the drinks, I could have sworn that I hadn’t been at several of the occasions that were being recalled. But the photos did not lie; I was usually there!

The memorial service itself was in Oxford. Jane and I were able to spend a very pleasant morning there before the memorial ceremony. Oxford centre was busy with tourists and a fresh batch of students. In a bit of free time, I visited the site of the old castle – a large mound next to the newer castle but one without good views across the city as I had hoped. I also strolled out of the crowds along the Oxford and Coventry canal and then through the pretty and interesting area of Oxford called Jericho. I had a very calming hour or so.

The ceremony in the Oxford Friends Meeting House was moving and the speeches (including my short one I think) were well received. Then we adjourned briefly to a packed pub and continued some of the reminiscences and the catching up with current lives. The whole process was very friendship affirming even though we had just lost a very good friend.

Post Memorial Service Catching Up — *^{Post-Memorial Service Catching Up}*

It’s been harder to keep up friendships with people I met during my 30 or so years in London since I moved completely out of the city a few years after retirement. I managed to stay in touch with a small group of friends in London who met every few months to work our way through the alphabet of cuisines. I made it to most of those sessions but they came to a natural end once we reached ‘Z’. I’ll need to redouble efforts to stay in touch with the participants.

Meanwhile, I have invested time in building up a new friendship group in and around our local village. And yes, building friendships does take effort and time. I have been lucky after moving to Gloucestershire post-retirement in that this is Jane, my wife’s, home territory. She has a large network of friends here and that provided a ready-made group of acquaintances.

Also, many of her family are based nearby. And, of course, family can be friends even though, apart from one’s partner, they are not chosen. Jane’s sister has recently moved to the local area and I’m looking forward to getting to know her and her husband a lot better as we become able to meet up more often. Plus, one of the things I am continually thankful for is that the relationships I have with my sons and their partners is akin to great friendships; I feel we both get on very well with them all.

My strongest local friendships have been built through my personal involvement in the local football team (Forest Green Rovers) and village events including Parish Council meetings, the Village Fete and Festival, the Pub Quiz and Crawl and, especially, the village’s Horsley Climate Action Network. These friendships may not have the longevity of some from my education or working life but they are some of the best.

Variable Weather During Prep For This Year's Village Fete — *^{Variable Weather During Prep For This Year’s Village Fete}*

This leads me onto the second recent event that got me thinking about friendship.

I am a frequent attendee at the local Talk Club (a session for men who generally don’t talk about feelings much, to talk about feelings). When this was on pause two summers ago, one of the other attendees and I decided that we would continue meeting up on walks. We would use these to keep tabs on each other thoughts and feelings and provide any support we could while enjoying the countryside, keeping our fitness up and providing custom to a few of the local pubs. That continued until my friend needed to go into hospital to have a fairly major operation.

*^{Peaceful, Sunny Scene On The Walk To A Friend}*

A month or so after that, I walked over to his neighbouring village to see him. It was a beautiful sunny day and a long leisurely walk. On the way, I was struck by how much I had missed him and had enjoyed our chats. Even after almost 70 years of making friends (and losing them again), it is still possible – indeed, easy – to make and maintain friends if one puts in the time and effort and are lucky enough to find people who are open, who listen as well as talk, and are fun to be with.

A Fruitful Summer

September 8, 2025 / fgrtommo / 2 Comments

Summer this year has been consistently sunny and warm. We have been able to plan on the assumption of good weather. Day after day, with only the briefest of interruptions, we have appreciated our gorgeous local landscape in clear air and sunlight. Although keeping the vegetables anywhere near watered enough has been a challenge, the fruit harvest – both cultivated and wild – has been huge.

*^{On A Local Walk To The Shops In The Sun}*

Of course, we now know that it has been the hottest summer in the United Kingdom on record. It has also been one of the driest and, for the first time in local living memory, the stream running through our hamlet has run dry for weeks on end. That is a huge concern since we also know that climate chaos is here and only going to get worse. Increasing wildfires, floods, oppressive heat and difficulties in growing food are all inevitable. But even while knowing of this impending crisis, we have loved the summer weather and, almost as much, the recent rain showers that have started to indicate the onset of Autumn and started to refill the stream.

I picked and used or froze all the gooseberries and blackcurrants. We also managed to consume, or give to friends, a rich harvest of gorgeous plums and damsons. However, the wild bullaces (like small damsons) will stay on the trees this year and we have only picked a small fraction of our apples so far.

Walking the local paths and roads, I have seen lots of buckets of apples offered up to passers-by by those with apple trees heaving with fruit. And all those walks have tended to take a little longer than usual as I stop to pick and eat the blackberries along the way. The familiarity with the local hedgerows I have gained since retirement, means I know where the best blackberries are as the summer progresses. It’s wonderful how many varieties of wild blackberries there are, each bearing different tasting fruit at different times.

The only downside from all this fruit is that I’m gaining a few pounds of weight as I turn the fruit I pick into delicious but calorie filled crumbles. Still, it’s only for a few months that I have this fresh fruit glut and then I will retreat to more parsimonious use of the harvest we have frozen. I have time to get my weight back to target by year end.

There have been many other aspects of the summer that I have enjoyed. In recent weeks we attended a lovely wedding of one of Jane’s nephews and his wife. Of course, like so many days, this was bathed in warm sun. That helped to make the event memorable and lovely. During and around it, we got to see our sons, their partners and our grandchildren – all chatting and playing together. That was an enormous treat.

*^{Looking For Grasshoppers With First Grandchild}*

Another recent event that was enhanced by the great weather was an 11-mile charity pub crawl around 11 nearby pubs. This started at our village pub (The Hog) mid-morning and, for the hardiest (not including me), ended late at night in a curry house or back at The Hog. I managed half the stops (and pints) but had the excuse of wanting to divert up to Forest Green Rovers to see my team’s game mid-afternoon (we won!) before rejoining the increasingly noisy crawl crowd. There was much merriment, new relationship making and well over £1,000 in fundraising for the MND Association during the day. I look forward already to next year’s occurrence.

Jane and I have been out and about a few times too. We went to Frome to wander the pretty streets before heading on to Bruton and the Hauser & Wirth gallery there. Frome is comparable to our local town of Stroud but is a little wealthier, has a few more independent shops and is a little more upmarket. Stroud is moving gradually to that benchmark I believe.

At the Hauser & Wirth gallery we saw an exhibition of works by Jean Tinguely and his partner Niki de Saint Phalle. We had come across Tinguely for the first time earlier this year when we visited Basel. It was good to make the connection with that short trip and the mechanical sculptures we had seen in one of the parks there. A neat touch at Hauser & Wirth was that, as in Basel, the sculptures were powered to show their intended movements.

*^{Jean Tinguely And Niki De Saint Phalle at Hauser & Wirth}*

The Hauser & Wirth gardens, by Piet Oudolf, are always worth visiting. The planting is dense and constantly changing with the seasons. Whilst many of the plants were still in full flower, others remained interesting because of their seed heads and textures. The only strangeness is the building at the far end which looks like an elevated spot from which to view the flat garden space, but just isn’t.

*^{Piet Oudolf Designed Garden At Hauser & Wirth}*

Even more recently we visited Edward Jenner’s house in Berkeley just a few miles away from us. Jenner created the smallpox vaccine which has since saved millions of lives and eradicated the disease worldwide. His house and garden are not particularly remarkable but his life was and it is well told through the exhibits on show.

For me, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the displays was how they showed the vehemence of opposition to compulsory smallpox vaccination in the 19^th century. Scepticism about, and opposition, to vaccination was, it seems, as strong then as it has become again now despite all the health gains in the meantime.

Edward Jenner's House And Garden, Berkeley, Gloucestershire — *^{Edward Jenner’s House And Garden, Berkeley, Gloucestershire}*

It’s been a very good summer. We haven’t done any a big holidays but the weather at home has helped my retirement feel like a big, comfortable holiday at home. Waking up to clear sunshine, wandering into town for the newspaper and daily shopping, pottering around the thirsty vegetables in the garden, indulging in the burgeoning fruit harvest and relaxing in the evening sun has all been very pleasant. Now, as Autumn approaches, maybe we will think about getting away for a bit…..

Sleepy Sheep In The Summer Sun — *^{Sleepy Sheep In The Summer Heat}*

Andrew Goldsworthy In Edinburgh

August 7, 2025 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

In my last post, I mentioned that, during our latest Edinburgh stay, both Jane and I enjoyed the exhibition of Andy Goldsworthy’s art at the National Gallery of Scotland. This was a celebration of fifty years of his work with natural materials such as clay, reeds and stones and even sheep poo. I thought it was a tremendous display and I’m only sorry I haven’t paid more attention to him before.

The entrance to the gallery immediately thrusts you into Andy Goldsworthy’s world of sustainable, largely transitory art, and his relationship with nature. The entrance stairway is partly covered by discarded and stained sheep wool stitched together into a stair runner. At the top of these stairs was a dramatic piece made of reclaimed barbed wire. Immediately to the left and right were canvases caked in mud and sheep droppings around a blank space where once there was a sheep lick that attracted the unknowing sheep as participants in the work. It was an arresting start to the exhibition.

'Fence' (left) And One Of Two 'Sheep Paintings' (2025) by Andrew Goldsworthy at The Scottish National Gallery — *^{‘Fence’ (left) And One Of Two ‘Sheep Paintings’ (2025) By Andrew Goldsworthy at The Scottish National Gallery}*

Many of the works were constructed by Goldsworthy specifically for the space afforded by the Gallery. For example, one room was filled with rocks gathered from 108 graveyards in Dumfries and Galloway where piles of surplus stone have built up as graves have been dug. (I confess that this was actually the only work I was not impressed by). Another room, with a lovely skylight, was hung with hundreds of bullrush stalks. Elsewhere, an entire wall was covered with dried and, therefore, cracked mud that is bright red/orange from the iron it naturally contains.

'Red Wall' By Andrew Goldsworthy (2025) — *^{‘Red Wall’ By Andrew Goldsworthy (2025)}*

The centrepiece on the first floor of the exhibition was a corridor of oak branches. At one end was a beautiful twisted collage of fern leaves and at the other a circular array of long reeds. The whole room was very memorable.

'Oak Passage' by Andrew Goldsworthy (2025) — *^{‘Oak Passage’ by Andrew Goldsworthy (2025)}*

Indeed, every room was memorable. I particularly liked the room devoted to photographs of Goldsworthy’s manipulations of sheep wool, stones, reeds and leaves to develop images of a fallen, dead elm tree. I presumed that all the photographs here were shot by Goldsworthy himself but there were other videos and photos that involved others; I wondered who they were.

'Fallen Elm' By Andrew Goldsworthy (2009 And Ongoing) — *^{Examples Of The ‘Fallen Elm’ Series By Andrew Goldsworthy (2009 And Ongoing)}*

Throughout the exhibition there were unpretentious explanations of what we were seeing and what Goldsworthy was trying to do – even the three works made from dripping hare blood and snow onto paper.

By the time I got to the end of the exhibition where Goldsworthy’s early work was shown, I felt that perhaps these might have been shown at the start to show the chronological development of his ideas. But, as Jane pointed out, that would have made the exhibition entrance less impactful. Fair point; anyway, it was one of the best art exhibitions I have seen and I recommend it to anyone in Edinburgh before very early November 2025.

Art, Gardens and a Big Anniversary

August 4, 2025August 7, 2025 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Our time in Edinburgh – the bread on either side of our Fife sandwich filling – was busy.

We did some of the usual things with First Grandchild (FG); going to the playground, visiting the National Museum of Scotland and meeting his hopeful requests: ‘can you play with me?’.

^{Playing Cards With First Grandchild (FG)}

We also went to the Museum Of Childhood for the first time. FG loved the activities available and we liked the nostalgia of seeing the toys from our own childhoods and those of our sons. Entrance to the museum was free and we will definitely be going back with FG.

Construction Toys From My Youth Including Betta Builder, My Favourite — ^{A Display of Toys From My Youth At The Edinburgh Museum Of Childhood, Including Betta Bilda, One Of My Favourites}

FG also had a tremendous time at the Newhailes Gardens and Adventure Park near Musselburgh. This is owned by the Scottish National Trust and is a wonderful facility. I wandered the grounds while FG loved all the activities. I then joined him to build towers, and to watch him get some experience of sack and egg and spoon races.

We did spend some time away from our Edinburgh family so they could get back to something resembling their routine. A huge highlight of this was a visit to the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland. Based on reviews I had seen, I was expecting great things and it truly was an excellent display. The exhibition was so good, I’ll cover our visit in a separate blog post after this one.

Jane and I visited a few other galleries while in Edinburgh. In the basement of the National Gallery was an exhibition of work by Paul Furneaux who we know our Eldest Son admires. I liked his paintings too.

'Temple Path' By Paul Furneaux At the Scottish National Gallery — *^{‘Temple Path’ By Paul Furneaux At the Scottish National Gallery}*

Furneaux also featured in the Open Eye Gallery which is always worth visiting as was The Scottish Gallery opposite. The latter had an exhibition of paintings by Alexander Goudie who I enjoyed getting to know a bit.

Another Painting BY Paul Furneuax, This Time At The Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh — *^{Another Painting By Paul Furneuax (‘Rain City’), This Time At The Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh}*

One afternoon, I slipped off and went to a free show of Post-Modern art at the City Art Centre. A little embarrassingly, I got told off for taking a photo here (see below, top) – I just didn’t see the signs prohibiting photography. Otherwise, my visit was very satisfactory as previous shows there have been. I particularly enjoyed the rather macabre painting by John Bellany of men gutting fish (also below). Bellany had a separate (but not free) exhibition at the centre but I didn’t pop in.

*^{Scottish Post Modern Art At The City Art Centre, Edinburgh}*

Jane and I also visited the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art briefly to see three or four rooms of works by Louise Bourgeois, Robert Mapplethorpe and Helen Chadwick. This was mildly diverting but only Bourgeois’s spider, which we had both seen variants of before at the Hayward Gallery in London, and the famous photo of Mapplethorpe’s disembodied head (see below) left much of an impression on me.

Beyond the art and beyond Edinburgh, we also took some time out to explore some gardens. Recalling these visits now reminds me that I failed to mention in my last blog post a very pleasant hour or so spent in the St Andrews Botanic Garden during our time in Fife. It was a longer walk out of the St Andrews town centre than we expected but well worth a visit to see a rather wild and experimental garden that is investigating how gardens, and the insects that live in them, can cope with our changing climate. Semi-wild gardens, busy with insect life, can be very attractive at this time of year.

Now we travelled south from Edinburgh to the Pentland Hills and Tweed Valley to Dawyck Botanic Garden. This is a 65-acre arboretum with a lot of mature indigenous trees and a large number planted using seed collected a couple of centuries ago in America by a traveller called David Douglas. He met a sticky end in Hawaii after falling into an animal trap already occupied by a bull, but his legacy at Dawyck is impressive.

The setting is lovely with gorgeous views across heavily wooded valleys to open hillsides beyond. It would be worth visiting again in Spring when more of the azaleas and rhododendrons are in flower.

We then went on to Little Sparta, the home and garden of Scottish poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay whose work I have often seen in various places in and around Edinburgh including, during this visit, the City Art Centre. This year is the centenary of his birth.

The garden is in the middle of nowhere. It is both a little chaotic and very sweet. Throughout the garden are little paths and about 200 individual art works from golden heads to simple inscriptions and stone sculptures. I particularly liked the open area beyond the wooded garden which included an attractive lake.

Of course, we ate and drank well while in Edinburgh as usual. A highlight was a drink at the Newbarns Brewery and Taproom followed by an excellent dinner at Ardfern. We will be going to both (and Ardfern’s sister restaurants) again.

Our stay in Edinburgh was completed with a rather splendid lunch at Timberyard. This was with our extended Edinburgh family including ES’s wife’s parents and was to celebrate Jane and my 40^th wedding anniversary. FG provided the rubies from his toy treasure chest and then got on with some drawing, leaving us to enjoy a splendid three courses. The restaurant is a lovely space and the service and food are top notch.

ES’s wife asked what advice we had, given we have achieved 40 married years together. I mumbled something about needing patience to adjust as circumstances and each partner change at different times. I’m not sure if retirement brings a requirement for more patience. Certainly, intermittent contact with grandchildren and no work to worry about allows much more time to think about getting along than full blown parental childcare and employment ever did!

We took our time over Timberyard’s food but there was still time to take in England Woman’s Football Team winning the European Championship after extra time and penalties. It was a thrilling end to a lovely week and a half in Scotland.

Enjoying Fife

August 1, 2025 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

We have just returned from a really excellent time in Scotland. We stayed with our Edinburgh based family and then gathered them up for a few days in Fife. We then returned to Edinburgh for our wedding anniversary celebrations and a bit more time in our favourite city. This is the longest sustained period we have spent with First Grandchild (FG) (and his parents) and it was a real treat.

We decided to travel to our holiday Airbnb in Fife via The Kelpies. These are huge metal statues of horse spirits that, as legend has it, tempted humans into the river and drowned them. The story may be a bit grim but the monuments, designed by Andy Scott, are very impressive. FG was less enamoured with the Kelpies than we were but walking around them was a useful activity break before the next section of driving to a recommended cafe in Culross on the north bank of the Firth of Forth.

FG’s wife always ensures that we eat very well when we visit Edinburgh and surrounds – either through her excellent and seemingly effortless cooking, or through her restaurant recommendations. The Mercat in Culross was a cafe and homeware shop that Jane had also heard about and the toastie lunch there didn’t disappoint.

*^{Views of Culross (Top One Courtesy of National Trust Scotland)}*

Culross is a very pleasant town. The market square was small but pretty and the buildings along the coast front were clearly historic. They are preserved well enough to, apparently, be used in a lot of period films and television series, some of which we have seen. The old wealth of the town was based on coal. While FG enjoyed the substantial playground, I read up on the innovative way in which the coal was loaded onto ships via a tunnel under the water of the Forth of Firth and then up a lift shaft onto the pier.

*^{Culross And The Firth of Forth (Pic Courtesy of National Trust Scotland)}*

Our holiday home was one of four new, eco-type buildings on the Charleton Estate in East Fife. It housed us comfortably (once we got used to the limited storage spaces and the absurdly steep stairs to Jane and my bedroom) and was surrounded by a golf course and open land we could walk around. In summary, it was near ideal and a great base for discovering other parts of Fife.

I liked Fife very much. We had visited the east Fife coast once before immediately after the wedding of ES and his wife in late 2022. Then, however, Jane was ill and the weather was so poor that we didn’t appreciate the environment much beyond being impressed with the scale of the flooding and the wind velocity. This time, we had warm and mainly sunny weather.

Many of the Fife towns have an interesting industrial and mercantile past often based on coal. The usually pretty main streets of solidly-built Georgian or Victorian houses and cottages indicate a historic wealth. Around these, the landscape is clearly fertile and is dominated by agriculture – mainly potatoes, wheat and attractive fields of manure/ground cover crops such as white radish and phacelia.

The coastal towns near our base were particularly attractive. Anstruther looked a bit touristy but Elie harbour was lovely and we spent several hours there helping FG potter about, make sand constructions, search for ‘treasure’ and paddle.

Even better was St Monans. I love this place. It’s a stop off from the Fife coastal walk – some of which is walkable only at low tide. It has a great, compact, sturdy harbour, many 17^th and 18^th century cottages and several grander old houses. I particularly enjoyed the views of the church (one of the oldest in Scotland) and the walk along the coast to a windmill.

*^{Coastal Walk Route And St Monans Church}*

On the walk I saw and/or heard interesting birds including yellowhammers, curlews, redshanks and oystercatchers. I then passed a huge tidal swimming pool built in the 1930s and still popular with wild swimmers today.

St Monans has a long history of fishing and industry. The windmill was used to pump sea water into buildings with salt pans. The foundations of these buildings are still visible. Using local coal, it seems that the salt industry all along the Firth of Forth coast was huge in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries until foreign imports became too competitively priced. It was interesting to see the remains of this bit of St Monans’ history.

On top of all this, St Monans has some very good cafes and restaurants including the Giddy Gannet and the East Pier Smokehouse (which provided an excellent smoked seafood stew in a beautiful location).

*^{St Monans From East Pier Smokehouse}*

We also ate very well at the The Kinneuchar Inn in the centre of another nearby, very pretty little town (Kilconqhuar). At all these meals, FG was very absorbed with his pebbles, shells and card games and was so well behaved (with a bit of ‘management’) that we could relax.

While in Fife, we also visited St Andrews. On the way, I was dropped off in Cupar while the others went on to an adventure park and a pick-your-own fruit farm. Like so many other towns, Cupar has a history back to Medieval times and a lot of nice old buildings. However, apart from a nice parish church and a walk along the Eden River, Cupar was relatively unassuming and unmemorable.

St Andrews, on the other hand, was very grand with its ancient university (founded in 1413), its prestigious golf course, beautiful beaches and historic buildings.

The cathedral, built in 1138, is now a ruin but has an impressive location. Within its grounds is St Rule’s Tower which pre-dates the cathedral. Together they are an impressive sight and a big tourist attraction.

St Andrews Cathedral and St Rule's Tower — *^{St Andrews Cathedral and St Rule’s Tower}*

Our break in Fife had all I could have wished for. We enjoyed variety, history, wildlife, attractive British landscapes, pretty towns and great places to eat. That culinary pleasure included a very good home barbeque engineered by ES. Plus, of course, we loved spending quality time with FG. We loved seeing him enjoy the whole holiday whether on the beach, in the playgrounds or learning how to play simple card games. I hope we can do something like it again sometime.

New Quay and Grandchildren

July 16, 2025 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

There have been a number of highlights in the last month but few, if any, have beaten the times we have spent with our grandchildren. We were lucky that the geography of Britain is such that the Edinburgh-based family passed through our neck of the woods twice on their way to and from Cornwall. Additionally, we have been called upon to do a bit of ‘emergency’ baby sitting for the Bristol-based family; another absolute pleasure given that the illness preventing nursery attendance was mild.

On one day, our two grandsons got to meet each other again at our house. Seeing them together is such a heartwarming event even if the age difference prevents playing together much at this stage.

Not everyone wants children and not all can have them. But I now feel luckier than ever that we managed to have three boys. It has added immeasurably to Jane and my shared history and we would have a lot less to talk about if we hadn’t had them. Most of all though, having children has opened up the possibility and, now, the reality, of having grandchildren and enabling us to experience a whole new dimension of fascination and love. Fortunately, we have lived long enough to see and enjoy them.

Second Grandchild (SG) is less than half First Grandchild’s (FG’s) age. He’s toddling about now he has learnt to walk, loves watching FG and he smiles and smiles. Our babysitting efforts with SG are win-win-win for us, parents and SG alike; we get quality time with him, his parents can focus on work and SG gets undivided attention from doting grandparents.

First Grandchild (FG) is industrious and always wants to help. He seems to love helping with weeding, cooking, vacuuming up dead flies and almost anything that he can see we are doing. He helped me pick gooseberries and plant seedlings; his favourite phrase seems to be ‘Can I help?’. Long may all that last.

I made the gooseberries FG helped me pick into jam. That felt like a huge achievement because of the lengths to which I had I had gone to protect the crop from badgers. I pinned down netting every few inches but they dug underneath. I put rows of brick around the netting but they moved those and dug underneath. I felt I was building Fort Knox. The only thing that seemed to deter them was a sprinkle of my urine on the grass around the bush (well away from the berries I should add). Anyway, we got 3.5kg of goosberries and several pots of very nice jam.

*^{Happy Success: From Picking The Gooseberries To Producing Jam}*

Despite the very hot weather and lack of rain, I have also had a bumper crop of blackcurrants. The badgers are less interested in blackcurrants and I just need to keep the birds off them. I’ve stocked the freezer with a several kilograms, given a kilogram to a neighbour and made a batch of jam already. There are more to pick and I’m looking forward to doing – it’s an outdoor task of repetitive, mundane simplicity and exactly the sort of thing I find relaxing and therapeutic.

^{Pots Of Blackcurrant Jam – Enough To Keep Me Going For A While}

In a break from all this fruit picking and family conviviality, Jane an I visited a couple who we know from our time in London and who have a house in New Quay in Wales. We have visited there a few times previously but I don’t think I have been there since before the Covid pandemic.

*^{View On The Beach Walk North Of New Quay}*

The town, once a thriving fishing town, is now dominated by tourism. It is set between two lovely cliff and beach walks – north towards Aberaeron and south towards Llangranog. We walked both ways in much better weather than had been forecast and ate in both these towns. I loved the walks in a fresh breeze, with few other people about, and with terrific sea and cliff views. The whole stay was a good dose of natural beauty, catch up chat and good food against a backdrop of lovely hospitality.

*^{Cliff Walk To The South Of New Quay}*

Later this week we are off to Scotland to visit FG and his parents and are looking forward to that enormously. We are hoping the weather holds but continues to become a little cooler (I’m sure Scotland won’t let us down on the latter front). Whatever, it will be great to see the little one and his Mum and Dad again.

But first, a little more fill in babysitting for the not very poorly Second Grandchild; always (so far, anyway) a pleasure!

*^{SG Not 100% Well But Still Attentive}*

My Retirement Journey

I've Retired! What Next?

Author: fgrtommo