Sketching and Painting Holidays
Ocean Breezes… so delicious, they named a cocktail after it. Alright, so it wasn’t ‘they’, it was ‘we’… because we have inadvertently invented a new drink, which became such an integral part of our trip. Sneaking around to someone’s room before dinner – usually Alison’s, because she had brought the bottles in the first place … Read more
The man in the railway office was rather gruff when I asked him if I could leave my backpack there while I went for a hot drink. Tall, slim and bearded, dressed from head to toe in pristine white, I didn’t recognise him; perhaps he was new. ‘Big boss,’ confirmed Raja. He wasn’t always … Read more
When I’m asked, as I am with rather surprising frequency, ‘Where’s your favourite place in Morocco?’, I always give the question just consideration. Then, despite the many wonderful spots which jostle for my affection, I concede that there is one place above all others in this country where I love to be, and my answer … Read more
And there it was! The same hump of succulent, twisted, dusty-green tubes nestled into a hillside of purple-brown lava, and standing proud against a pale blue backdrop: part sea, part sky, it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. I spied it as I rounded a sharp bend, just as I … Read more
There’s nowhere quite like the Dolomites. Towering columns of orange-grey and jagged, ochre pinnacles stretch impossibly into the misty clouds, where the last remnants of snow sparkle deep in the crevicies. The still waters of Alpine lakes reflect the spruce trees, while dwarf pine and azalea line the stony paths. It’s been a few years … Read more
Where does my love of islands come from? Is it inate, from being born and raised on a large one of sorts, albeit encompassing several countries? Or from my more recent past, living on Tanera Mhor (one of the Summer Isles), during four extraordinarily happy years? When I had the chance to visit the Isle … Read more
Many people of a certain age will remember the Cadbury’s flake advert of the early 70’s, in which a young woman in a floaty dress sat herself daintily down in the middle of a cornfield with her watercolours. It began to rain, but instead of hastily packing up and making a dash for it, she … Read more
Azwu bzef: A lot of wind. Too much wind. Enough wind; more than enough … more wind than you would ever want to encounter in the middle of a desert. ‘You are so lucky.’ Hamid, our Moroccan driver, always tells me when a sketching trip has ended without climatic hitch. According to him, March is … Read more
It’s as if I’ve never been away. The sticky heat; the salty waves, warm as a summer bath, and the blue-black belch of the tuk tuks as they scurry back and forth between Banderanaike airport and Negombo ‘beach-side’. It’s January, it’s a new year; it’s high season and tourists are arriving by the plane-load after … Read more
As I take my Christmas Day lunch out of the freezer, with rather more excitement than you might imagine, I do wonder if I’ve become just a little obsessed. It’s a large takeaway curry that I bought from our closest Indian restaurant, which is in Ullapool, thirty-six miles away. There’s enough to feed several people, … Read more
