Poacher Bill. A loveable rouge, and friend.

Poacher Bill, introduced. Old Bill was a Cotswold man through and through, born and bred to Country ways and lived in a little village near Burford, often referred to as the Gateway to the Cotswolds. Bill had four great consuming interests in life, they all started...

Flying under bridges for fun

Whilst browsing the other day, my butterfly mind wandered to the History of that beautiful city of Winchester where I once lived, I remember the old bridge over a minor road on the outskirts of the town which was known locally as “Spitfire Bridge”. Apparently on one...

Vintage Calvados

My host smiled as she handed me the bottle, ”Treat it with respect, use it as a medicine, not just for pleasure”, her words spoken in the strong earnest manner of the French farming community of the Calvados region of France. It transpired that this was one of the few...

‘Wartime Romance’

Standing on the beach on the French coast at Dunkirk, dirty, hungry and totally exhausted, being alternately machine gunned by German aeroplanes and shelled by German Artillery, in that part of the war in 1940 when all seemed lost, I was completely unaware that I...

‘A Moment In Time’

All day the sounds of gunfire, exploding shells, screaming planes, chattering machine guns, exploding bombs – all causing death and destruction. Long lines of soldiers leaving the flimsy safety of the sand dunes, the lucky ones boarding boats, and being rowed...