Sunday mornings can be special times. After a week of grey skies and rain, a bright and sunny Sunday morning can be very special, especially one very recent Sunday I spent in Benidorm. There was a wind, substantially more than a cool breeze, that whipped the sea into one metre waves. The effect of sunlight […]

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I love books, because they can create their own worlds. Until you open it, until you start to read, a book gives no clue as to where it might take you. It can surprise in how it gets you there and, importantly, it might not even bring you back… Unlike television or film, when a […]

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I want to tell you a little about Lindsay Sunley, a sculptor from the northeast of England who has been in Spain for two years, studying Fine Art at the Miguel Hernandez University in Altea (Costa Blanca). Thankfully the rain held off for the opening of her latest exhibition. She specialises in stone and has […]

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… you’ve probably developed an expat’s perspective on Blighty. My wife and I have been out of the UK for sixteen years and each overseas sojourn has offered its own insights into our Britishness, our Englishness, or whatever, both in its expat and resident form. You can imagine that the British expat communities in Brunei […]

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It is thirty-four years since I arrived in Kenya at the start of a two-year stint as a volunteer teacher. In 1974 overseas holidays were already commonplace, but rural parts of Africa were rarely on the itinerary. It wasn’t my first trip overseas, but it was, as a twenty-two year old, precisely my second. Two […]

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Musica a Boqueta Nit, Altea’s summer festival, on the Costa Blanca last week presented the harmonica and piano duo of Antonio Serrano and Iñaki Salvador for its penultimate concert. The Plaza del Agua was crammed to overflowing for the occasion. Word had got round that something special was about to happen.

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I’ve read the above recently and thought I would share my views with you. This set of short stories all have a Spanish flavour. Most are set in Spain, with many featuring locations and people from within the Costa Blanca, where the author lives, works and continually observes. Some are historical, others utterly contemporary, both […]

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“Travel broadens the mind” is a cliché that retains a ring of truth. But perhaps it should be qualified to exclude any form of tourism where the product or the outcome is largely predictable. It may be snobbery on my part, but I don’t believe that the blokes from West Yorkshire I met in a […]

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A full symphony orchestra in full flight is a thoroughly rousing experience. When that is combined with a programme that offers contrasting style and form, the result is usually a treat. When the whole is also delivered with the enthusiasm of a youth orchestra, then joy also enters the equation.

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Percussion ensembles often try to raise the macho to an art form. Loudness and aggression often predominate, usually to the detriment of music. (Obvious exceptions are any Korean samulnori ensemble, where the macho is utterly enshrined, Gary Burton at his best, anything involving Steve Reich and occasionally in the past, Kodo.) But too often they […]

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