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Mark Whittow

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Yes, it is time for more LWC reminiscences. It was a cold morning in December and I was walking around the Cambridge colleges with Karen, the daughter of my mother’s friend. (Yes, I did have a big crush on Karen, just in case you were wondering.) Just on the off chance that he might be at home, we called at Mark Whittow’s house. Mark was one of my heroes at the London Water Closet (and I did not have many). He kindly tolerated my presence, even though I was three years younger than he was, probably because he knew that I was also a fan of all things historical. (In particular, I remember Mark patiently correcting my understanding of the caracole , a cavalry tactic in the Thirty Years War.) Not only was he a brilliant actor (his performance as Doctor Stockman in An Enemy of the People was superb), Mark was also an all-round eccentric. Mark treated the teachers at LWC with a mixture of casual indifference and flippancy. On the morning in question, he had just received a letter from ...
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Getting Into Print

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Well, I have started on a rambling recollection of my days at the London Water Closet, so I might as well continue.   It was after I left Junior House that I also found a good way to skive out of most (if not all) of the compulsory sport: the College Press, aka the printing project. Hidden behind the school's admin bloc was the printing shop, a large room with a strong smell of ink and an old Cropper Minerva printing press. Don't let your fingers get squashed during printing - this is the origin of the phrase "To come a Cropper".      I must confess I love my press, For when I print I know no stint Of joy.     Well, my joy was to get out of games. RTD was usually in a panic because some programmes had not been printed for the upcoming school play or there was some other printing job that needed to be done in a hurry, so my friend Malcolm and I would volunteer to do it if Roger got us out of games that afternoon.     The room with the old printing ...
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The Last Post?

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Flipping Bulgarian postal service! They really are pretty blooming useless. My old friend Peter sent me a parcel from the UK, but it never arrived. Well, actually it did arrive - back in England.  I ordered some DVDs and a book. I really need “Napoleon the Great” because I am going to be spending quite a lot of time on the beach on Samothraki, so I will definitely need something to read! Irena loves lying on the beach all day, but I have to say that it is pretty blooming boring. She is very keen to go to the seaside, as her bronchitis is quite bad and nothing seems to be shifting it. Not much to report from Daveri. Irena’s friend Mila came for lunch today and this meant rather a lot of conversation in Russian, so I made a tactical retreat upstairs to my computer. My blog is going well. I have managed to work out why many people were not able to access it. https://bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com is the way to get to my blog. It does not work if you send people www. Yes, I ...
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Colditz!

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Colditz!   My unhappy time at boarding school began with two dreadful years at Junior House. In some ways it was a case of "in at the deep end", and after J.H. the transition to the senior school was relatively painless.   There was something sinister, something rather threatening, about the way that the dormitory wings stuck out on either side of the building. The BBC series of The Colditz Story was on TV at more or less the time when I was an inmate at J.H., so the two are inextricably linked in my memory. Someone once told me that they had asked Douglas Bader what it was like being a POW at Colditz Castle and he replied that most of the time it was very, very boring (rather like LWC). On Sunday afternoons we had to go for a walk and we were not allowed back for a couple of hours. At first, it was fun to explore the Copse and the surrounding countryside, but you soon find it pretty boring when you do it every Sunday.      Boarding schools gradually weaken and...
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The London Water Closet

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One of the quirks of the English language (or maybe of English people) is that we sometimes say exactly the opposite of what a word actually means. "Gay" really means happy, joyful and free of care. Whose smart idea was it to call a wild area of the countryside, the royal property of William the Conqueror nearly a thousand years ago, the "New" Forest?    Just in case you did not know, I went to a slightly posh public (i.e. private) school called Lord Wandsworth College.      Little Lord Wandsworth  Had a college in Hants. He had silken trousers And marble pants.    Although the front gates look absurdly pretentious, the reality is that going to LWC in the 1970s was a pretty horrible experience. The food was awful, as school food usually is, I hated competitive sport (and there was plenty of that) and the college was way out in the countryside, miles from anywhere. My mother could never have afforded the outrageous school fees, but my father (a hea...
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Dear Malcolm

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Dear Malcolm,        Wednesday, 13th May, 2026 So booze has finally arrived in Saudi Arabia! And not before time. In Doha, there was something quaintly called “the Qatar Distribution Company” or the QDC or just the booze shop. As well as alcohol, you could also buy some rather overpriced pork. In Egypt, you could actually buy wine that was made in Egypt. It was horrible. I am sure that they are paying you rather well to mix some concrete, but I quite like being retired. It’s much more fun than going to boring staff meetings. Being a teacher meant quite a lot of paperwork, writing loads of end-of-term reports and so on. We came back to our country house near Elena in March and so far the spring has been a bit on the chilly side. As usual, we are planning to go to Greece in June. Any other news? I think I told you that M. B. was “struck off” the medical register. He was a senior anesthetist in a hospital and he made several questionable decisions that resulted in patie...
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Welcome to the first Gardening Bore of 2026!

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Yes, spring has finally, finally arrived and maybe summer is not too far away. (I am so excited that I was almost inclined to give both "spring" and "summer" a capital S.) The garden of our country house in Daveri is looking really rather splendid.    The tractor mower did an excellent job and the lawn next to the terrace is looking beautiful. A very pampered and podgy Plovdiv pooch is celebrating the warm weather by lying on her back and showing her tummy. How embarrassing! The really good news is that we have had a bumper crop of asparagus this year. It is absolutely yummy when eaten with my dear wife's delicious homemade mayonnaise.
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