23 things you didn’t know about Stratford or Shakespeare

I’m sure there are a million interesting things about Stratford upon Avon. There have to be. It’s a lovely place.   Here for a starter though are 23 that we learned our recent visit. Stratford upon Avon has been given lamp posts by councils and countries around the world.  They line the streets and to be honest you probably wouldn’t notice unless you looked hard. There are actually three theatres in Stratford.

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What is the point of an injunction these days

Social media is awash with a story that has been rumbling on for a couple of weeks now and it is proving, once again, that injunctions are making the UK privacy laws a joke.  And making me ask what is the point of an injunction these days?  I am clearly not talking about those that NEED them for their own safety, such as victims of domestic abuse.  I am talking

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Window Wednesday — Chichester

Can we just pretend it is Wednesday?  And not Thursday.   Or that some kind of technical glitch meant that this post, written and planned over the weekend, was published 24 hours late.   That it is going up, and into your inboxes on Thursday, has nothing to do with me sitting down at 5pm on Wednesday evening and exclaiming “bugger, it’s Wednesday isn’t it”. Great, thanks. So now that

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Setley Ridge Vineyard

Twenty something years ago my parents decided to up sticks and move to France.  They bought a vineyard and beat the French at their own game.  Within a couple of years they had rebuilt the pretty much derelict Chateau, won awards and turned around a failing business selling wine to the local co-operative into a business making 80,000 bottles a year, some of them stocked in Waitrose. I swear the

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Stratford upon Avon

Shakespeare died 400 years ago this year. He’d have been 445 if he was still alive, you know. Just THINK how many plays he’d have written by now – we’d have needed an infinite number of zoos, each with an infinite number of monkeys to type all that lot. However, to commemorate the fact that our greatest English-speaking playwright would have been 446 this year, Stratford upon Avon is having

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Window Wednesday — RSC

Window Wednesday this week is from the RSC in Stratford Upon Avon   We were at the RSC during our weekend in Stratford exploring all the town has to offer.  Its just under two hours away and I had never been so thought it might be fun to play at being tourists for couple of days. We had a tour of the RSC booked for Saturday that included a visit

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Tea for good

This past weekend in Stratford Upon Avon I toyed with the idea of documenting our time in the town in cups of tea.  We drank a lot of it.  I drink a lot of it generally and this weekend was no exception.  I get so much from my various daily cuppas that goes far beyond it just being a drink.   And the tea I have shared with other people

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Introducing Trolley Bags

If you don’t know about Trolley Bags, you really should.   They are one of those inventions that make me kick myself and wonder why I didn’t invent them.    The idea is very simple.   Four bags, that stick together with velcro, the perfect size to sit in a supermarket trolley.   Available in two sizes to fit either a shallow trolley or a deeper one.   You simply

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Holidaying in Jordan

Given how much we hear about Jordan on the news at the moment you might be forgiven for thinking it is not the best place for a holiday.   After all, I have just come back from a few days visiting a refugee camp there and all my photos show city scapes or endless miles of desert.   But there is so much more to Jordan than just that.  

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Five miles might not sound a lot

And in the grand scheme of things five miles might not sound a lot.   Eddie Izzard for instance ran ten times that in a day this week, having run 25 marathons over the previous twenty five days.    The man is a machine.   A hero.  A legend.   Which really makes our 5 miles nothing in comparison.   But for me it was quite the challenge. Let’s face

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Anatomy of a desk

the anatomy of a desk The joy of working from home is you can work from anywhere.  Bed.  The garden.  The local coffee shop when you get bored.   The kitchen table.  The corner of the dining room.  Or a room you call your office.   You might not even have a desk to work on, I know that I am very lucky to have one that is just mine,

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Aldershot Military Museum

Seeing there was an exhibition of watercolours from a local artist on display there made Mr B pick the Aldershot Military Museum as our destination for this week’s Saturday afternoon mooch.    To say it was an exhibition was a bit of  stretch since there were only about ten pictures but it was lovely to see 19th century paintings from the local area that we are now going to investigate

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