Author: Chris Mads

  • Country Living don’t do weekends, but if they did…

    Spring is trying to, well, spring. The snow, which plunged us into a deep freeze last week, shifted as the weekend hit and that meant that S and I could indulge in a countryside day out we have been planning for a while. We woke up surrounded by fields, with cool sunshine overhead and barely…

  • The rise of vermouth

    The age of vermouth is here. Now it is entirely possible that you have had one of two reactions to that statement: 1. Isn’t that the stuff my Grandma drinks? 2. Ver-what now? But have no fear, for you are not alone. A short while ago I was having dinner in Helsinki when my dining…

  • The Non-Oscars 2018

    The Oscars were last night. As I sit writing this at my desk in London, Twitter is lighting up with photos of semi-inebriated Hollywood bods enjoying the post-ceremony merriment. The morning after the Academy Awards always produces a tidal wave of lists all chronicling one of two things: who won what and who wore what.…

  • World Book Day: Who would you be?

    It is World Book Day today. Now the snow may have put a stop to some of the festivities and I am sure there were some mini Mary Poppins’ running around homes unable to get to school. But the idea is fun isn’t it? Dress up as your favourite book character and go about your…

  • Oh lord, it’s snowing

    “Holy sh*t, it’s snowing.” I imagine that statement was uttered up and down the country this morning. Possibly slightly more in the South, where we are rather more shocked by the appearance of the trappings of winter. You see it is one of the great British traditions: we are always surprised by the snow. The…

  • Pippin stuns in Southwark

    The show must go on. Round of applause to the cast of Pippin at the Southwark Playhouse who fought through technical difficulties to give a stunning show this evening. S and I headed to the theatre with little – or in my case no – knowledge of Pippin as a work. It’s by Stephen Schwartz…

  • 19 questions with…me

    I’ve always wanted to do one of these and since this is my blog I figure I can do what I like with it. There is also a bigger point here – two bigger points in fact. The first is that some of the answers to this surprised even me and sometimes it is entertaining…

  • ‘The great laying down of identity’

    I recently started keeping a journal again. I say “again”, I am not really sure if I ever properly kept a journal before. I’ve had notebooks that I’ve written bits down in and I once kept a diary for a whole year of my life to see if anything exciting happened – it did. But…

  • Lessons from literature: Paddington Bear

    “Words, Caravaggio. They have power.” I loved Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient when I studied it at school. This snatched quote here is a perfect summary of how books and stories can contain lessons and meanings for us to take with us after reading. This is rarely more true than when you think about the…

  • Holiday dreams: Scuba diving in Gran Canaria

    My list of places I want to go is already pretty impressive, but I think it just got one name longer. In a couple of months Spain will open its first ever dedicated scuba diving resort and when “spend your days underwater visiting shipwrecks” is on the bill you know you just might be onto…