My own personal Wayback Machine recently reminded me that as the first Covid lockdown got under way I was forced to address some prominent myths about sourbread baking being promulgated.

All well and good. A columnist for hire must occasionally promulgate timely myths if they are to earn a cru...

There’s more ➢

Once again, later than it “ought” to be, but this time the answer is simple: holidays. A glorious couple of weeks tooling around Sicily with one of my best, and longest-standing, friends and the Squeeze. If I wanted to delay this round-up even more, I’d focus first on writing that up, but I won’t.

There’s more ➢

⏱️ 01:48   ⇄29.7km   ⌀16.3km/h   ↗?m   ↘?m

Another fine ride, and for the first time with an old friend and his old bicycle, a beautiful Moulton. We met for a preliminary coffee in a newly reclaimed park down by the Tiber, which when I lived nearby was a barren wasteland used mostly by junkies,...

There’s more ➢

⏱️ 01:56   ⇄24.5km   ⌀12.6km/h   ↗?m   ↘?m

The weather a couple of days ago was absolutely glorious with real warmth in the air so it was an easy decision to pack a sandwich (and some leftover pasta!) and extend my shopping trip to visit the park.

There’s more ➢

An excellent In Our Time episode on Sir John Soane brought me up short. Guests talked about Joseph Gandy, a talented draughtsman and artist who worked closely with Soane to turn Soane’s architectural drawings into realistic depictions. Gandy and Soane both had a taste for the aesthetics of ruins. One of Soane’s greatest commissions was for a new Bank of England. Gandy transformed the architectural drawings into realistic paintings, one of which showed the Bank as a ruin, a thousand years in the future.

There’s more ➢