It is the time of the Cannes Film Festival and we are enjoying days that are as sunny and warm as midsummer. It makes for a great atmosphere down along the promenade and on the beaches at Cannes. No raincoats over evening dresses, so far this year. No umbrellas to try and keep the coiffed…
It has been reported in the press this week that a replica of the Grotte Chauvet has been created. It will be open to the public by the time you read this. The original, containing thousands of prehistoric animal and figure drawings, will no longer be accessible to visitors because our human presence is putting…
I am a little late to the table with this due to a heavy workload this week, so sincere apologies. However, better late than not at all because I think it is exceedingly important to mark this moment in our fight for the safekeeping of the honeybee, for all pollinators and for the natural order…
I have been focusing quite a bit on war recently so I thought for this month’s blog I would choose a subject that is closer to home and of a lighter aspect. A love story. This true story is set along the Côte d’Azur, the Blue Coast, but it began in the north of France…
It has been a while since I have written a blog for this page and I apologise. Life seems to have overtaken me these last few months. Aside from my days of writing, I have been travelling, but a little less than usual. I have just returned from a short trip to Thessaloniki in northern…
Last month I wrote a little about the events surrounding the Charlie Hebdo massacres in Paris along with my reflections, observations while travelling in Algeria seven years ago. I am continuing along a similar theme today: Algeria and a broad brushstroke of the events that led to the Algerian War of Independence. The French colonial…
I am writing this from the Eurostar on the way back to Paris. The France Show is over for another year, our Olive Farm lunch (anyone from the Olive Farm Facebook page who attends the France Show is welcome to join us for this annual event) is also behind us. Both were great fun. I…
I am writing this ahead of my regular blog date because I will be away on a work commitment and possibly without internet. Much could happen between today and the 26th… However… This month of January has been a tragic opening to the year of 2015. One of the murdered Charlie Hebdo team collaborated with…
On Christmas Eve 1914 in northern France a frost set in. It had been raining for weeks, filling the trenches to waist height with water, soaking spirits, drowning hope. So acute was this drop in temperature, that it froze solid the soldiers’ great coats and hardened their boots. The men themselves were “frozen to the…
This month, on 9th November, six weeks after Scotland voted to remain a part of Great Britain, ‘a self-determination referendum’ was held in Catalonia. The citizen participation process on Catalonia’s political future was originally the ‘Catalan Independence Referendum’ but was rebranded as a ‘popular consultation’ after the original was suspended by the Constitutional Court of…
I have just returned from a brief stay in Palermo and the western coast of Sicily. Autumn at the heart of the Mediterranean can hardly be bettered. The grape harvests have been completed, the olives are soon to picked and the weather is usually absolutely splendid. I first visited Sicily in 2005. This trip kept…
This post will talk a little about my recent travels rather than promoting anything new in my work field. It is another ‘while-I-write-my-novel’ post. It has been a busy month in terms of travelling. I spent a week in Sicily – I have written about this for my 26th October post for the History Girls…
Many years ago, in a period of my life that is almost history now, while I was filming the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, I was invited to take part in a Save the Whale rally which was to be held in Trafalgar Square. It was a Sunday. A high stage had been…
Tangerines remind me of childhood Christmases. Can you recall that tangy aroma once you’d pierced the skin with your thumb, peeled it away and the juice began to spray out like an ignited sparkler? Dates were rare in my childhood home. Amber-coloured like big sad eyes, dry and sugary, they arrived in elongated oval boxes,…
Here is me getting wet!!! The Ice Bucket Challenge has gone viral and for good reason. It offers a laugh at the sight of others suffering momentarily while creating awareness for a disease that I had never heard of before, ALS The ALS researchers are looking for funding to find a drug to help combat…
July has been one of those months when, as they say, I hit the ground running. I am not sure that I have ever actually used that expression before, certainly not in connection with my own life, but it seems fitting this time. On 5th July, I arrived into Cork just before the start of…
I wrote this for the History Girls blog over two months ago. It was posted today… Planting olive trees in the West Bank : http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-tree-of-peace-by-carol-drinkwater.html Carol
I am in Bantry, West Cork, attending the West Cork Literary Festival where this afternoon I am In Conversation with the Irish writer, Alice Taylor, talking about gardens and the healing powers of the earth, and throughout the week I am teaching a workshop on Memoir writing. I was here for the same workshop last…
I sincerely hope this is not true. I am posting it so that any of you who reads this in the States can look into it for us all. http://www.globalresearch.ca/illinois-illegally-seizes-bees-resistant-to-monsantos-roundup-kills-remaining-queens/5336210 Friends, if you haven’t signed this, please do. https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/mailalert/953/red-alert-for-bees-support-the-eu-pesticide-ban Please can we post this on BEE page? I hope the link opens correctly https://www.facebook.com/GMOFreeUSA/photos/a.468695639837571.108816.402058139834655/778403705533428/?type=1&theater It…