Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

On the Disadvantages of Central Heating

Hard to think of a better example of misplaced romantic nostalgia than yearning for the days before the era of modern central heating, double glazing, insulation and hermetically sealed homes. The fretwork of ice on the inside of the bedroom window in the morning; the eternal sliding off of the eiderdown in the middle of the night no matter how…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street

Here again – for the summer solstice – are those Wittenham Clumps. By the early 1940s Nash’s was in declining health. Suffering from chronic asthma – triggered his wife Margaret believed by inhaling gas at Passchendaele in 1917 –  he had endured several spells in hospital. He and  Margaret, began to make visits to nearby Boars Hill where their friend Hilda Harrison lived…

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