"A serious house on serious earth"

I recommend Bruges (where Darling Wife & I just passed a very happy weekend) to anyone. Lovely hotels, fine museums and architecture, a pretty canal, great food and drink, and not one melancholy Irish assassin to be seen. To itemise the highlights? Well, I might speak of the Church of Our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk) with its glorious marble Madonna and Child by Michelangelo, its rococo pulpit by Jan Antoon Garemijn, its bronze tomb sculpture of Mary of Burgundy, and the boxed-up stained-glass of George and the dragon (beside which an old geezer poses above…) But then whenever I wander round a really great old church, as was our pleasure in Bruges, I do always find myself wondering what finer thoughts Alan Bennett would be having were he in my shoes...

Africa Alive nr. Southwold...

... is a pretty good spot for a family day-out. Rhino, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, monkeys. Lemurs. And, of course, the kings of the jungle, less disgruntled than most lions I've seen in safari parks, even on a day when the breeze was a tad brisk. My Darling Wife and I even had a nice cup of tea. The intrepid little girl in the purple coat is of course our Dear Daughter.