MIND, BODY & SPIRIT: Time Off for Me

It's autumn here in Sardinia. The beaches  are almost exclusively left to local residents and latecomers and  I'm taking tomorrow morning off to lie on this one in Golfo Aranci. 

With an  important name for a beach - La Prima Spiaggia -  it also has a great bar a few steps from the water's edge which is perfect for  a mid-morning capuccino and also a seafood restaurant which serves the best sea bass along the coast . Altogether (to use a Stephen Fry expression) BLISSY

Find your own blissful place in Sardinia:

http://annunci.ebay.it/annunci/vendita/olbia-tempio-annunci-golfo-aranci/sardinia-beach-road-one-two-three-bed-apartments/7791964

WORK: Charismatic Language

Words that intrigue, attract and innovate are charismatic and using the right language is vital to selling your service or product: especially over the net where the visitor to sales ratio is the crucial factor.

My work involves translating sales literature from Italian into English but sometimes words gain poetic appeal left in their original imperfect form when profit is not an issue.    This delightful note was left to Mrs. Rosemary Verey from a Japanese visitor to her garden in Gloucestershire.  Enclosed with the message was a ginger root:-

Mrs Rosemary Verey

Thankyou very much for everything.

Today's morning.

I found other present for you to my Seiko in my bag.

(oh my God, I have mistake once more...)

That is Ginger, Zingiher officinale.

It is living now . happy!

I must send to you in haste!

Thank you very much for bottle of my heart.

 Naotaka Hirota

27 June 1986

(Taken from A Christmas Cracker by John Julius Norwich 1994) 

TRAVEL Back to Favourite Places

Before I moved to Sardinia I used to live in London: just off the Old Brompton Road in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Whenever I'm over in England, South Kensington usually pulls me back. It's fascinating to see what's changed, moved in or out and what's still reassuringly stayed the same over the years I've been away. On the Old Brompton Road Harrods and Harvey Nichols are still there of course and at the other end there's the comforting sight of the Brompton Oratory and on Exhibition Road the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A visit to the V & A to see my favourite pieces of English fabric, furniture and pictures is on my list of things I MUST DO to treat myself whenever I'm back in England: together with meet ups with old friends, the essential meal of Fish & Chips and stocking up on Lapsang Tea and Marmite to take back to Sardinia.

My sister's husband came with me this time and we first had some lunch  at an intriguing Polish restaurant - The Gessler - on Thurloe Street, just around the corner from South Ken. tube station.  The food was simple, deliciously wholesome and impressively served.  The restaurant itself was shabbily good looking with an important old fashioned feel about it and in fact the Manager  told us that it was the Polish Officers' Club during WW2.  We ordered the four course set lunch which was a bit greedy and we couldn't manage to finish  the pudding - a spiced seed cake.  A shame to miss so  this was carefully wrapped up in a paper bag.  It came with us on our walk up to the V & A , around the exhibitions and back on the tube and then up north by train from Liverpool St.  We enjoyed it with our tea, sitting in my sister's pretty Essex garden.

Tip: Take a torch some of the exhibits are very dimly lit.

The Victoria and Albert Musuem, Exhibition Road, London SW3

http://www.vam.ac.uk/

The Gessler, 20 Thurloe Street, London SW7

Tel: +44 020 75896117