Sat in front of Piero della Francesca's Resurrection, in a beautiful, spare space, I’m struck by the absolute directness of the gaze. He is looking straight at you, with no sign of having suffered except a minor piercing.

“Oh, that? A flesh wound.”

Then there is the casual drape of his left...

In the course of my previous couple of posts I faced a huge mystery. Google “what is the proper name for a nun's headdress” and you won‘t be much the wiser. At least, unlike Robert Browning, I know that it isn’t a twat. “Veil” is the best I could come up, thanks to the OED via Google Books.

Not that I am in any position to judge, but it seems like another myth about Roman history has bitten the dust. The giant sundial known as the Horologium Augusti, out there by the Ara Pacis, is not a sundial at all. It’s a meridian. A what? Go read the whole post at Archaeoastronomy.

Saturday night, on the town. An early movie, then a stroll through the centre of the city to an English pub where a friend’s band is to play later that night. Much later, it turns out. They are scheduled for 9.30, which suggests 10.30 will be nearer the mark. It is only 7.30. Normally it’d be ea...

Down by the river yesterday morning something in the sky caught my eye. This was not easy, because my eye was fixed firmly on the ground to avoid the shit, needles and other detritus of the raggle-taggle life. I glanced up to see two skeins of geese arrowing fast towards me. I whipped out the phon...