Travel
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The Reverse Dangers of Restaurant Reviews
Although a great lover of travelling and eating out, I rarely write reviews of the places I visit, the restaurants where I eat, the hotels I overnight in. It is enough for me that the food was enjoyable, that the room was comfortable, that the city or town had places of interest. Aside from which, there are so many reviews floating around the virtual world, boosting internet web sites and search engines more than the businesses being reviewed, it seems to be an overload. That is, unless I come across a brand new business, one which has not yet broken through into the public gaze, or been recognised by those…
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A Most Respectable Lifestyle
I suspect it depends a great deal on a person’s interpretation of Respectable, and whether it can be accepted for many different ways of life, or just from those in certain professions, and the former landed gentry but, as a child, it was a lifestyle which appealed to me. The fault is undoubtedly that of my grandmother – mother’s side – who talked of the old ways of the professional tramp, and the morals and standards some of them lived up to. How they traversed the country, seeking odd jobs and short-term employment in return for sustenance and a quarter to rest in, before moving on to new areas; unbound,…
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The Utopian Golden Age of Steam
Transport, especially trains, has a bad name. Some might say it is well earned, others that the comments and accusations, when taken in context of the whole picture, are overblown and unnecessarily damaging. The fact remains, things are not what they used to be, and many hark back to the days of steam, when trains were punctual and clean, as if they had lived those days themselves. Here, in a country where the punctuality of trains is always talked about as being perfect by those from other countries, things are as they have always been, and as they are in most other western nations. The trains and buses run, that…