Thoughts from a Devon Sitting Room

Recording my life in diaries and photographs, from heady days as a student in London in the 1970’s to being a pensioner on a low income today. My writing is a mixture of insight – from knowledge & experience – and history. I explore my professional and personal interests – energy & climate change, history, politics, music, film, food & drink… the list goes on!

50 YEARS OF PHOTOS

No.9: Golden afternoon in Le Castellet

1982: relaxing in Le Castellet in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region in south-east France. I love this area – not too far from Toulon.

  • Let’s Build More Cold Homes!

    No.107, Wednesday, 25th. March 2026

    I am looking forward to a day of doing almost nothing. However, I will have to move around a lot: this Devon sitting room is, at 14ºC, rather too cold for me. Reading and writing are pretty much out, as is listening to music or watching a film. Why are all of my preferred pastimes sedentary?

    The weather has taken a wintry turn after just three days of spring. Cold strong winds from the north-west, which is thankfully unusual in this part of the world, are making it ‘feel like’ -1ºC out there, according to my weather app, and I can believe it. So gardening is out of the question. However, a potted Nandina that I tidied up only a few days ago – and weighted down with additional and even bigger pebbles – has been blown over and is now on its side. I shall have to rescue it at some point. Pointless to do it now – it’ll just blow over again. And, as if to add insult to injury, we are now being hit with icy rain.

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  • Who decides what is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty?

    Wednesday & Thursday, 24th/25th. March 1976

    Swansea field trip day 3

    Day 3 and our intrepid geographers make the short trip from Swansea University to the Gower Peninsula. We were here to gain a ‘feel’ for the place in a combination of coach tour and very windy hill walking.

    I am fairly sure that the objective for the day was to ensure we were told as little about the objective as possible, in order to ensure we would develop as objective a view of the landscape as possible. Does that make sense?

    Possibly not, but all became clear as we headed back, sooner than anticipated, to university. An early dinner followed by “…a bloody great long lecture on landscape evaluation…” according to my ever-so succinct diary entry.

    I was not expecting this, and I suspect most of us were now thinking that perhaps we should have paid more attention on our little tour. For some reason I found that many of my classmates seemed to be focussing a greater than usual degree of attention on me. Very nice, but why?

    (more…)

Recent posts

So who is Colin Anderson?

A Devonian with stories to tell and a love of history, science, philosophy, environment, & entertainment.

An increasing number of people I know are either down the rabbit hole or caught in its event horizon, which I find distressing. I prefer the real world and, like a frantic sponge, I cannot help but soak up knowledge, insight & quality.

Which I like to share…

USA 2016 travelogue

Scotland 2022 travelogue