Riverford and a Dartmoor Tor

We booked into Riverford for lunch early on in our holiday.  We’ve been twice before and are totally converted to their food.  Even simple dishes like mashed potatoes are somehow works of art (and believe me, I’ve experimented many, many times to inject some variation into mash!).  And vegetables I’ve never been keen on – like fennel or beetroot – are somehow magically transformed. 

My father and Thatcher

Dear Dad

This week Thatcher died and was buried, a fact that would have had little emotional resonance for you.  But you, like no-one else I’ve ever known, would have relished the political discussion it's sparked and all of its subtext.  The media have necessarily made it a time of reflection, but what I reflected on most of all was that you’re missing at times like this: my father who took the opportunity of every mealtime to prick my political conscious.

Coming home from Dartmouth

I always feel that coming home from holiday is an emotional as well as a physical journey, a movement away from that pocket of time when things are different.  I suppose the idea of a holiday is that productive activity is stripped out of life, but the more I think about it, the more the reverse seems to be true.  So much worth remembering takes place.