We’re very grateful to one of Audrey’s former students and summer visitors from Heilbronn, Petra Mueller, for the following memories of Mum, penned for readers in Germany and translated here with the help of Google Translate. Original article in German here – Petra has captured Mum to a T. 1985-86 I was staying at the […]
Read More Petra Mueller remembers AudIn honour and memory of our inspirational, hugely talented – and complex – mother Audrey, her ashes now safely stored under our Sheringham stairs awaiting Lifeboat dispersal at sea next month, here’s posting a scanned and carefully edited copy of possibly the most influential book I have ever read, or had read to me. Conceived, […]
Read More The Crow Who Feared a PopgunDeath isn’t a subject I’ve written all that much about on this blog. But even if it took her a very long time (best part of a decade since her diagnosis with dementia) to get there, as these things go Mum had, and continues to have, a good one. The funeral is this Friday, May […]
Read More Going Out with Colour, Character and CardboardAudrey Diana Brayne, a six-decade-long Sheringham community stalwart, died in the early hours of Wednesday 21st April, a few days before her 94th birthday. In the dark of that night, a truly unique light was extinguished, of a forward-thinking internationalist who championed issues, movements and protests long before they were fashionable. Audrey entered the world in 1927 […]
Read More Audrey Diana Brayne, RIPI probably don’t need to write this follow-up to my blog of March this year on being diagnosed, at 70, at last and rather late in life, with Aspergers/High-Functioning Autism. Indeed, just thinking about starting this piece reminds me just how difficult I’ve always found writing to be, whether agonising over a poem or short story for […]
Read More Being Aspergers, Part the SecondIt was tremendous fun discussing with Ian Sanders of Cold War Conversations my years first as student in East Germany and the Soviet Union in 1971/72, and then covering the communist world for the next 20 years for Reuters and the BBC. Click the screenshots below for the recordings – first covering my student days […]
Read More Reporting the Cold War for Reuters & BBCI’m not quite sure how this post will unfold, other than to know that a) like my despatches from Beijing or the Cold War’s diplomatic frontline it will probably be too long, and that b) some old BBC friends and colleagues may already be sighing, “Oh dear, there he goes again.” Prompted by Fergal Keane […]
Read More Aspergers, Part 1Anglo-German friendship on display at the Moehne dam of Dambusters fame. Rapidly repaired in 1943, by forced labour, following death of 1600 civilians (including 1000 Russians) in the 7-metre-high tsunami unleashed by the dam’s breach. With Dunkirk, one of the great WW2 myths that, all these years later, helped fuel Brexit. To whose supporters I […]
Read More Germany’s Moehne Dam and Brexit…Complete delight supping, stopping, tandeming, smiling at seriously real toy railways with old friends Günther and Irmgard Reichle in Menden on way home from the Danube. Old pictures of us cycling in Berlin 1980, then us today, then videos of Günther’s amazing train set in warm evening action. PS their tandem is the same Motobecane […]
Read More Tandeming with Guenther and Irmgard, nearly 40 years on.Great 1000-km tandem trip just concluded into Budapest from Regensburg, through 12 days of baking Central European heat down the shockingly dry and low Danube (climate change, anyone?) and with warmest thanks to stoker Jutta on the back and steed Daisy below. Both arriving in rudest of health, though one of the two did need […]
Read More 1000km down the Danube