the restaurant of mum

04.11.2026

Once, on a long trip in Abu Dhabhi, we were being taken out to the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in possibly the whole world for days and days and days. After a while though, I asked my mother to make me something at home. I was tired of eating food by other people. It was a simple and inexpensive dish. Lentil curry with chapattis and a salad. But it tasted so much better than everything else that I was eating. My mother’s food is the best food in the entire world. Because it has my mother’s love in it.

Yet when you read the newspapers, you never get anyone talking about the restaurant of mum. They are perfectly willing to describe and review the food in all of the posh restaurants that they are going into. Do I want to be like them? To treat everything outside the house as worthy of importance and that which is within beneath consideration? To treat the best as the worst and not mention it? No. Because I became a writer for my mother and for my grandfather and for my community. So I will write about the restaurant of mum.

Today for dinner, my mother made chicken curry on the bone with a freshly cut salad and fresh home made chapattis. Everything was made from scratch. It was an authentic Punjabi dish that was so delicious that I scraped every single drop of the curry from the bowl in which the meat was served.

The chicken was succulent and flavourful. There was a mix of thigh pieces and breast meat because I don’t like eating drumsticks. This was the personalisation in the dish. Aside from that, my mother hadn’t put too much chilli in because I am being wary of it as I was advised to do so following a persistent cough by both my girlfriend and my doctor.

The curry that the meat was in was sensational. It was a firm paste created through the blending of tomatos, garlic and onions with garam masala that my mother had ground together herself. It is the bones in the chicken that give it the awesome rich flavour. That’s the authentic way to make it. It was absolutely perfect.

The chapattis were fresh and crispy, hot off the grill. And the salad was fresh: raw onions which I particularly enjoy with my curries to accentuate the flavour, crisp lettuce, cool cucumbers, tangy tomatoes, savoury radishes and spinach leaves which my mother gives me for strength and health. All washed down with some filtered water.

An amazing meal. And the great thing about it is that this is a dish that my mother cooked for everyone all day. A lot of love went into it. The great thing about it is that this is a dish that has been passed down generations of Punjabi women. It is the passing down of love through generations. The great thing about it is that I get this dish regularly and I look forward to it every time. Because a lot of love went into it.

If you are Punjabi and your mother cooks for you, you eat like a king. This is the restaurant of mum. It is the best restaurant in the whole world.

Highlights of the Past Week and Today

03.11.2026

While my life is not perfect and not what I’d always hoped for, while there are great sadnesses in this life, I try to make it as happy and as full as I can. They say one should practise gratitude by focusing on the good moments in life. So why not talk about some highlights?

Highlights of the Past Week

A birthday party the day before my birthday with seven of my friends in the local pub
My second birthday with my girlfriend
My first guided Halloween tour at night time
An autumn walk in Epping forest with three of my male friends
Today I have just come back from the Florence Nightingale Museum Late
A visit to the Korea Exhibition at the British Museum
A visit to the American independence exhibition at the British Museum where I saw one of only two surviving handwritten Declarations of Independence

Highlights of the Day 03.11.2026

Finishing my first Art History assignment for my Master’s in Art History with The Open University. To be submitted after re-reading tomorrow morning, well in time for the deadlines. There is nothing like the accomplishment in finishing a piece of writing where you know that you have done your absolute best and done a good job of it. There is nothing like engaging with ideas and culture.
Homemade lamb samosas for lunch. Leftover from my birthday and eaten with tomato ketchup.
A walk in Valentine’s Park with my microscope. The microscope is one of my favourite toys. I was looking at buds, roses, seed heads, leaves, rocks and a sycamore seed with it. There was an absolutely beautiful moment despite the light rain when I was in the lavender beds and could smell the faint fragrance from them. The trees were also in glorious autumnal colours of orange, yellow and red.
Leftover special mixed Turkish kebab for dinner. Bought for my birthday. With a freshly cut salad. Dessert of some Fox’s special cookies that I bought for myself. Just outside the Florence Nightingale Museum.
Being inspired by the sheer goodness of Florence Nightingale at the Florence Nightingale Museum. She had a calling from god. I could understand it as I believe I have been called by destiny too.
Getting some great shots of the London Eye from Westminster Bridge. Photography is one of my favourite hobbies and the light and conditions today for it were superb on my smartphone.
Enjoyment from reading a great chapter from ‘Skandar and the Phantom Rider’. I read children’s books and enjoy them because they are full of adventure and excitement. Things actually happen unlike so-called serious literature.
Reading in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. The only way that I have been able to connect with Indian culture outside of my family has been through reading, movies and music. I always congratulate myself on teaching myself to read in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, each of them with different scripts. I valued my culture when everyone else seemed to devalue it. I am proud of my background.

Holiday in Greece: Ambelas to Athens to London Day 9, 25.10.2026

What were the highlights of my once in a lifetime Greek holiday?

– A private tour of the Acropolis and the Acropolis museum by the beautiful and erudite Eva.

– Running the 400m at the original Olympic Stadium

– Walking one and a half hours in the sun to see the Mycenean Acropolis

– Seeing Athens and its ruins such as Hadrian’s library

– Seeing the Portara at Naxos and bouldering on the breakwater there with an Australian couple

– Athens National Park

– Visiting the Archaeology museum in Parikia and learning about Archilochus

– The glorious sunsets and natural beauty

– Being amazed by the churches and their art

– Browsing the shops and the markets such as the Old Towns and Monsteraki market.

– The food! Standout dishes include the moussaka, the seafood platter, the mixed grill and desserts such as limoncella, Greek yoghurt with nuts and honey and the sublime banana split I had in Naxos

And aside from that, so many beautiful moments. The sour cherry juice, the ice creams, bouldering in so many locations, the idyllic taxi drives, even the hot showers! Visit my blog if you want to experience the things with me.

My body knew it was time for the dream to end. I woke up super early in the morning even though the clocks had gone back. I managed to do language learning in Spanish, German, French, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu through short stories and newspapers. I use this site called (Language) in Levels which broaches news stories for the European languages. I also read some psychology summaries.

This was my last breakfast at the Margarita hotel so I again had waffles with scoops of chocolate ice cream. Tipped the nice lady that had served me every morning and then wandered outside to look at the beautiful white and blue church and at the seascape before the taxi came to collect me.

Again, I enoyed the idyllic drive through the rural countryside although this time I was feeling a bit nauseous, only mildly so. Inside the airport, there was an American obsessed with the prices of things and when I sat down, he was talking about shooting. Apparently, he couldn’t afford to play bridge at six dollars a month. Got up for some old folk to sit down, so didn’t hear the end of the conversation. Instead, I started reading ‘Blue’ magazine which is a really super interesting magazine. And it has parallel text between Greek and English so I kept a copy for study back at home.

The plan was Olympic airlines and I actually got a window seat for once so I was happily snapping away in the clouds and looking down at the islands. It was an amazing experience just by itself.

When I got to Athens airport, I went straight to the museums and exhibitions. Athens International Airport features an Exhibition of Archaeological Findings which displays around 172 local artifacts unearthed during the construction of the airport, spanning from the Neolithic and Early Helladic to the Post-Byzantine periods in the Mesogaia region. There was also the Eleftherios Venizelos Multimedia Exhibition and lastly, ‘The Acropolis Museum’ – A Classic Destination exhibition. The latter is a specially designed preview space offering travelers a glimpse of classical Greek heritage before or after visiting Athens.

The archaeology exhibition was a great look into everyday life around the airport in the old days and the Acropolis museum exhibit was a great reminder of my wonderful private tour of the site with Eva. The Eleftherios Venizelos Multimedia Exhibition I found inspiring at first, but then I started contrasting this nationalist with Gandhi. I am an anarchist. I hate the state. The state has been trying to kill me and exclude me from before I was born. They tried to sterilise my mother so I would not even be in the world. I could not support the nationalist sentiment behind the adulation of the man. True, he had created 30, 000 schools. But what did they teach? They taught nationalism. I had watched the school kids marching with the flag when I went to Parikia. That is what those schools are like. And Gandhi? Gandhi supported the autonomy and the independence of the village, not the state. There was a big difference.

Lunch in Burger King. Strangely, the burgers were not as good as the ones in the UK. The other ingredients were fresh though. I had a double Whopper meal as I had a long flight ahead of me. Wandered around the shops afterwards, which included buying another Harry Potter in Greek from W H Smith’s and looking over the goods in Victoria’s Secrets. There was a cool store called ‘Angels’ or something selling scarves but they were super expensive.

The flight home was quite nondescript except for the last twenty minutes when the lights went out and we were all wondering what happened.

Racist incident at Stanstead airport just as soon as I got back into England, showing what the country is like to us. When I called up my girlfriend, the group of four elderly people behind me started mocking my call. I turned around and told them to stop being so rude. The leader of the racists – they always travel in packs – started mouthing off. But it was funny that when I said to my girlfriend that I had a bunch of twats behind me and had to sign off, and they realised that I could hear everything they said now and had just sworn at them and told them off in front of everyone and would do it again, that the courage of their racism petered out, revealing them to be the cowards that they were. Of course, the bystanders offered no assistance. But this is my destiny. I am a warrior. I am fighting in a spiritual war. Destiny has favoured her son by giving him a war. It is my duty and privilege to protect the people and The Mother.

London. Always the same. Guy on the Stanstead express pushing his bag into my face as I was sitting down, completely clueless and inconsiderate. He got told off by his wife when I gave him a look and she noticed. Heated argument outside the station in my area as I was coming out. The bus? Nowhere apparent. Nine minutes away. So I walked home in the cold. This was what I was coming back to.

But in London, there is my family. And there are my friends. At home, my mother had cooked me a chicken and rice curry. I spent the evening unpacking, grooming myself, getting ready for work in the morning, contacting my girlfriend and friends. Not enough time to write this last diary entry for the holiday and sleep, what with the hour going back, at what would have roughly been 2 pm Greek time.

The holiday of a lifetime? Accomplished.

Holiday 01.10.2026

An eight o’clock start, the day began with sleeping in. Then some chi building and meditation and a leisurely breakfast listening to the songs of the great and late Lata Mangeshkar.

After this, I set out to Valentine’s Park with my trusty pair of binoculars and a microscope. I pottered about by myself observing the birds, the trees and also scrutinising the flowers and plants with the microscope. I wandered in the walled gardens and by the stream. I met up with my friend who came down on his cycle and we walked circuits of the park talking about life. He told me that I had made his day by meeting up. We banged into a lady that he knew from the park run just before we headed back home.

Waiting for me was a lunch prepared by my mother which was hot boiled egg sandwiches which I washed down with water.

I headed off afterwards to the Olympic Swimming Pool Gym in Stratford where I did some heavy weights. It was a good workout. Then I called up my girlfriend.

I popped into work for a quick meeting about a project I was passionate in getting involved in even though it was my day off and then I headed out for some bouldering. It is only the second time that I have done it in my life. I managed to get in a running jump catch which impressed everyone and the video of it has already got 1.5K views on Instagram and many likes.

Bouldering was hard on the fingers but quite enjoyable. I’m always up for a challenge, physical or mental. And this was both because you had to work out the route and the possibilities too, as well as making sure your body could do it.

I called my girlfriend up again coming home and arranged to meet her and my friend later in the week.

Thanks to my mother, I had a dinner of chicken curry on the bone, chapattis and a salad waiting for me at home. Afterwards, on the spur of the moment, I decided to watch the Hindi film ‘Alpha’. It was a slick production with some excellent action scenes for the most part. I thought it was an interesting story, although there were many cliches about war and warfare, those kinds of films. The actress Alia Bhatt is a nepo baby that I have never liked but she has given two really great performances in the last two films that I have watched, this one and ‘Jigra’. Both of them flopped. Why? Because they apparently can’t stomach a female action heroine in India. But I can. We worship The Mother Goddess. She is the epitome of the warrior. We from the warrior culture model ourselves and our world upon her. These films were made for me. The teaching has penetrated deeply. Even when I played ‘Street Fighter’ when I was a kid, my favourite was Chun Li.

reflecting on an unsettled life

23.09.2026

While I was born and raised in England, my family in India are poor. So, my whole life, I have been hearing about poverty. I have been hearing about the insecurity and precarity that comes with an unsettled life.

My family in India, they believe that when they get to a developed Western country, their life will be settled. The lives of their children will be settled. This is what my grandfather believed when he came to this country. That’s the future that he imagined for his children and his grandchildren.

But my life has never been settled. I have had to struggle. Just like they dream of a settled life, so I have had to dream of a settled life.

The difference between the ones from India and the ones from here is that they have arranged marriages and they have their own unified community. So they fit in and they get hitched. They’re willing to work in whatever job they find because it is better than being unemployed in India or working for peanuts.

Here, if you are Indian and choose not to get an arranged marriage, try meeting someone. Try starting a family. Try getting the jobs that you are qualified for doing and would excel in. It all hitches on someone giving you a chance or an opportunity. When they cannot. Because of the racism in this country.

So, just like the origin of my poor family in India in the caste of the Dalits and Untouchables has clouded their whole life and made it a struggle, making their lives unsettled, so has my ethnic origin as an Indian person.

But still, I have refused to give up my Indian culture. I have refused to accept the conformity in this country or pander to the unjust expectations that we must all follow convention. Is it worth it? It has come at a great personal cost. The greatest personal cost. Yet if it was easy and convenient to be authentic and true to oneself, then the world would not be what it is.

The virtue of an unsettled life is that this is a life that I have created for myself despite everyone else. Despite the insane pressure from the Indian and the British community, I have forged my own way through life. I have done what I thought is right. I have made my own choices. I have thought out life in my own way.

The reward is isolation, uncertainty, the lack of a resolution or a happy ending. No love. The achievement? Dignity and self respect. We come from the honour culture. It is the greatest prize.

Frida and Whistler at the Tate: The Weirdness of the Artist

09.09.2026

The ambition? Two exhibitions in one day. Two of the most famous artists in the world. Two artists, I have to admit, that I do not have a particular affinity for.

It began with the Frida. Almost immediately, I noted what the tenor of the exhibition would be. Because there was not much of her work, they were going to pad it all out with other artists and photographs and imitators and those inspired by her. Her style has never appealed to me but the exhibition was keen to show why she was so iconic. She appealed to the women, the feminists, the LGBT+ community, those with medical issues, etc. She was capitalism’s darling as an artist.

I’ve always thought that as a woman artist, much of her reputation rested on her suffering. Because the public wants the artist to suffer. I know it by my own fortunes. They want us to have no money and suffer and suffer and suffer. This, they believe, gives good art. The most iconic artist in this regard is Van Gogh.

Frida was weird. The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1938 which depicts a young woman falling from a building was something she intended for the young woman’s mother instead of an idealised portrait. Can you believe it? Where was the compassion for the grieving mother? Frida rubbed in the circumstances of the tragic death instead. The woman lies at the bottom in a blanket of blood. This is what Frida’s art is: trying to show reality. Yet she is associated at the same time with the surreal, the out of ordinary and both realms collide on the spectacle of suffering.

The feminist credentials of the exhibition were iffy, considering she is a feminist icon. We wondered whether the nude intimate photographs of Frida should have been on display. They were private things that she had not authorised to be shown in her lifetime. Shouldn’t Frida have been given ownership of her own body as a woman? Again, Rivera’s work was displayed alongside hers. Wasn’t the aim of the feminists to argue that these women artists that lived in the shadow of their husbands were just as good? Wasn’t it the feminist aim for the art of the women to be seen aside from and apart from the art of their husbands? I found it weird given the context, even though I do not see myself as a Western feminist at all.

If Frida was weird, so was Whistler. He came across in the biographical details as a despicable and aggressive human being. He had fights with all the men in his life. In his time, when relationships were supposed to be for life, he seemed to go through woman after woman and could not keep faith with them. The display showed how petty and argumentative he was as well.

I’ve never admired his art. The best stuff for me was the White on White series, featuring his then love and muse Joanna Hiffernan. Perhaps because this is about love. Perhaps because it is less experimental than the other paintings in my mind.

Whistler was a rule breaker. He was expelled from Westpoint for breaking the rules. And he appeared to break the rules in art as well. However, the aesthetic is not appealing. The portraits all look unfinished and too faint and obscure. The landscapes are all obscured in the mist as well, although some of the nocturnes look okay. He was good as a realist artist as his early ink sketches show, but even there he was not exceptional.

The Peacock room fiasco where he overextended his artistic licence with a rich patron, which led to a bitter quarrel, shows the personality of the man. He believed that because he was an artist, that he was special and that he could do whatever he wanted. He was arrogant. And you can see this arrogance in his paintings. He made the sitters sit for up to seventy times so that he could control them, keep them immobile and under his sight. The man was obnoxious and on a weird power trip where he wanted to impose himself on everything and everyone. It’s not a surprise that he is so rated in a culture which overvalues arrogance and a supposed exceptionalism. The reason that he broke the rules? Because he thought he was too good for the rules.

20.08.2026 – Travel Diary: Sambourne House, Nigo exhibition at the Design Museum, Japan House, The Whitechapel Gallery

The day began with reading the news and meditation followed by chi building, light weights, a shower and breakfast. Language learning was next. Harry Potter in French, Urdu and Hindi. BBC Punjabi news and short stories for beginners in French and Spanish, a page each. On the commute to the first destination, I read Let’s Talk by Nihal Arthanayake, all about the art of conversation. I would finish the book during the day. My first finished book in a while as I am reading a few all together.

Sambourne House

A time capsule into the Victorian past with an overwhelmingly beautiful maximalist aesthetic. It was truly glorious to step into each room and look over the cherished family objects, many of them bought at auction and at bargain prices such as the chipped plates that were displayed on the wall. What added to the fascination was reading the room guides and learning how the family had acquired the objects and delving into their lives, how they truly lived on a day to day basis. For one house, there was so much to do.

The visit began with a video introduction to Linley the artist, the family and the house. The son Roy who had taken up the house was one of those boys that could not get on with education I noted, and had never managed to take the degree at Oxford.

The list of objects were intriguing. From the make do conservatory to the walking stick that had been manufactured from a crocodile spine, there was a glorious array. Roy’s room was full of photographs of actresses from the time, there were Linley’s cameras lying around, photographs of nudes, and a peculiar turtle shaped object near the fireplace which turned out to be a container for cigarettes.

At the end of the visit, as I was recircling the rooms, one of the volunteers came to speak with me alongside the fountain of all knowledge there who was called Stephen. We chatted about volunteering in these heritage sites and about some of the attractions around London.

Nigo Exhibition at the Design Museum

I went to this exhibition because I just happened to be in the area after Sambourne house. The story that they were telling about Nigo was that he wanted to rebel against the conformism in Japanese society. And therefore, he had gone to America and the west. As I pondered upon this tale, looking over his designs which I was not very partial to, all of the ugliest of American design copied out, I thought to myself why these non-Western people seem to think of the West as a revolution. All Nigo had done was to substitute Japanese conformism with American conformism. It was ridiculous. Yet they thought it was Revolution. Yes, it is Revolution to slavishly mimic the art and culture of the bullies in the world. To fawn over the powerful. Yes, that is the essence of Revolution.

I noted though, with a wry smile, that at the end of the exhibition, Nigo had become a Japanese tea master and learnt how to make Japanese porcelain in the old way. At least that was encouraging. He had gone to the west to rebel but had returned to his roots.

Japan House

After a lunch of reduced price sushi from Tesco’s, I had a quick look upstairs here as I had seen the exhibition downstairs about photography before. As usual, it was a delight to look over the tatami mats, the pearl jewellery, the wooden rings, the pottery and the dishes made out of lacquered wood, the stationery and the beautiful pens. To admire the Japanese infusion of art into everything that they do. I returned to the display about bamboo and reluctantly left the place.

The Whitechapel Gallery

I met up with a friend and she and I investigated the ‘patchwork’ theme of the artworks downstairs, including a video of the bespoke suit industry, the contrast of Islamic carpet textiles inside with the British world outside in a series of photographs of windows (perhaps about the religious Islamic view of the world?) a gold and textile screen which hid a video and poetry about Chinese immigrants in Britain and also a video about Bengali muslin producers.

As we were down there, we were informed of a speech by Fozia Ismail about ‘A Song for the Xeedho’, about knot making from a Somali nomadic community of women. The speech was interesting and went on for about an hour. I saw the artwork as a reaction against Western art and its values. The art was communal, not individualistic. It was from a women’s tradition and not patriarchal. It was by nomads and not the settled. It was handicraft rather than fine art.

Upstairs, we saw some beautiful greenery made out of bronze and paint, saw an exhibition where you tasted Bengali food and then a video about Punjabi women in the fields talking about their life. We also saw the exhibition on the ‘OITIJ-JO Collective: TUFAN’. I took a series of photographs of my friend with the artworks throughout.

Items read today commuting to and fro from places:

New York Times

The Metro

The Financial Times

The Transalpine Gazette

The Red Bulletin

Music listened to today:

Batwara 1947 – The Movie Soundtrack

Nindiya Pari from Gandhi Talks

I finished off the day with wings, fries and a mountain chicken fillet burger at Chicken Cottage washed down with a tropical Pepsi. And a phone call with my girlfriend just before I got the tube back home at Liverpool Street.

Travel Diary 13.08.2026

Today was results day for my two nephews. Anxiously, we awaited what would happen. It was good news. And particularly heartening for me because I had tutored one of my nephews and now he had got into the university that he wanted. The other boy, I had also helped to raise. These things are always team efforts.

After finding out, I headed off to Apsley House, home of the Duke of Wellington, the hero of the war against Napoleon. It was full of treasures, including an elaborate Egyptian dining centrepiece which was absolutely magnificent. The hieroglyphs were so detailed and done in miniature on the piece. There were amazing treasures too in this museum room, including much gold and many swords, some of them Persian and Indian. I particularly admired the mermaids on the trophies. In this room, I read a letter in French presenting the Egyptian centrepiece and thought to myself how wonderful it was that I could read the language so fluently. I had really enriched my life by studying the tongue.

I spoke to the volunteer about the fabulous Canova statue of Napoleon that was there, so heavy and big at three tons that the room underneath had had to be fortified. I told her that it was probably not my nephew’s favourite as the Napoleon section of the history exam had been quite difficult. There were many other Canovas too, which was a real delight, as well as paintings by Rubens and Velasquez, the latter which I admiringly gazed at. The rooms were all a delight and there were other treasures such as the oldest grand piano in the country. I asked one of the staff members what their favourite painting was in one of the rooms and noted that they had one of one of the places where I work. Apparently, she had also worked there. The banqueting table room was quite magnificent too and seeing it, a lady visitor remarked that the place was better than Buckingham palace.

The next trip was to Hyde Park, where I called on a couple of my friends to wish them a happy anniversary. By this time in the afternoon, I had already called one of my best friends, my girlfriend, an older lady friend who is not doing so well nowadays and the couple with the anniversary. I spent time in the park gazing at the floral beauties in the display in front of, of all places, the facilities.

Home next. On the commute to and fro from London I had been reading great tales from English history and listening to Hindi film songs. At home, I made myself sausage and ketchup sandwiches which I washed down with water. I went to sleep next on my bed.

When I woke up, I refreshed myself with some lychee juice and studied French, Spanish, German, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu by reading short stories and the news. A few letters to my pen pals in New Zealand and Paris were penned and then I spent time booking things with my girlfriend then headed into London again to meet up with her briefly before I embarked on the last stage of the night.

The venue was the Piano Smithfield near the Barbican. I crammed in a Subway meal for the first time in my life next to it: a sub made out of pepperoni, salami, cheese, jalapenos, red peppers, onions and spicy chipotle sauce. Washed down with a Coke and followed by a double chocolate cookie. It was quite tasty.

The performance was STAGE FEVER Vol. 1 – Royal Serenade, about Korean music and love. Featured Artists:

Soprano: Soyeon Shin, Sophia Jin

Global Pop Artist: QoA

Featured Musicians

Piano: Leah Park

Violin: Sophia Jin

Performers

Stanely Dubentru-huret

Henry Chandler

I had fun listening to the wonderful music, watching the dances and taking many photographs of the event which you can see on my instagram page for my photos – @suneelmehmi . At the end of the performance, I got a photo with the very beautiful Soyeon Shin who I had immediately been besotted with.

When I got home for the night time, I finished off a Lindt chocolate and hazel nut bar that had been kicking around for a couple of months and then edited up my photos of the event and posted them. Then, I wrote my travel diary which I have just completed now.

Oxford Travel Diary 09.08.2026

At 8 am, we left home for the trip. The ride there was accompanied by the songs of the Beegees and Burt Bacharach.

We arrived at the Park and Ride just out of the city in good spirits and caught the 400 bus down after almost going down to Redbridge instead. We had been asking a lady that had suggested it and also letting her know that we lived in Redbridge in London. The bus driver had redirected us. The journey into town was lively as there were a number of young students on the bus as well.

The first thing we did when we got into town was to dive into the Paul’s bakery where I treated myself to a blueberry brioche that was on for two pounds. It was delicious and I washed it down with a glass of water. My friend had an Americano and I was telling him that I was not a big fan of the flavour.

We got out of the bakery and walked past the town hall which was closed on a Sunday. Initially, we thought that we would just look around without any guidance or Google but then I saw what looked like a local and asked him for directions. He gave them to us patiently and when my friend enquired what it was like to live in Oxford, he told us it used to be much better.

The first stop was the Ashmolean museum. The staff on the entrance joked with us about cake and how we were too individualistic because we hadn’t shared any with them. Inside, we started off with the statues and then walked into the Ancient Egypt tour by Mary which had just started. The tour was very interesting and included the history of the Ashmolean, Great Britain’s first museum. When the tour was finished, we bumped into Mary again by a tablet in Ancient Greek and she started talking to us about all sorts of things like teaching Ancient Greek, classics and learning hieroglyphs. She answered all my friend’s questions about Ancient Egypt too. Then, she invited us to some drinks and we sat in the cafe with her talking about Oxford and things like whether museums should charge. I had a Coke while we were talking.

We meandered over to the Natural History museum next which was fun with all of the fossils. We took in the exhibition with the key materials of the future and spent a lot of time admiring the birds and insects that had been done in taxidermy. We started our adventure there with the cafe and had foccacio, mine with cheese, rocket and tomatoes. Highlights of the trip included seeing the Venus of Willendorf and seeing the skeleton of a chimpanzee as well as the skull of a hippopotamus. The Natural History museum lead into the Pitt Rivers museum which was a fantastic collection of stuff like Japanese masks, snuff boxes from different cultures and things like carved boats.

Next stop, the Oxfam bookshop. Slightly disappointing as I thought it would have a better selection. We do much better in London. I picked up a book on Imperialism though. We then made our way into the University Parks where we found a big tree to lie under and have a nap.

Feeling refreshed, we made our way into the city centre to have a look about. We did all the big tourist things. The Bridge of Sighs which I thought had been slightly over hyped. Investigating the area around the Bodleian library and seeing the Radcliffe Camera too, an area in which I had a chocolate chip ice cream and where we were surrounded with what looked like Chinese tourists.

We wandered into the Thames path next and had a refreshing walk in the greenery. We were behind a massive group of young students. My friend had a swim in the Thames. We came out and saw the music artist Devon Mayson performing the Cher song ‘Do you believe in love after love’ in the balcony of ‘The Head of the River’ and then walked into the Christchurch gardens which were wonderfully beautiful.

We closed the day at Oxford with a meal at Popeyes where we had a Cajun spiced chicken burger, mine with spicy wings and fries. Finally, it was the 400 bus back to the park and ride and then a journey home where I had to rest my eyes a little bit. I got back home at about a quarter past eleven and finally in bed at about a quarter to midnight after sharing the photos and videos of the day with my friend.

Ulting and Southend on Sea – Travel Diary 08.08.2026

The last long walk and day out that my friend and I had last week was from Woolwich Arsenal to Crystal Palace which was about forty five thousand steps (but I never managed to write about this walk). I was really looking forward to this walk.

After we dropped off my son’s friend at Stanstead Airport, we headed down to Ulting and the river Chelmer. The sun was glorious and not too intense and we made our way down along the river. My friend was seeking out an entry point for some wild swimming. Apparently, the Chelmer was known to be a good spot for this.

Unfortunately, the lining in my favourite grey Puma trainers had ruptured and my foot had been sore with a blister for the past few days. Today I was in excruciating pain. I hobbled along.

The river was populated by a number of families and couples. We saw a guy with his whole body tattooed several times as he walked up and down the riverbank with his girlfriend (tattooless). There were little boys fishing with their fathers and my friend asked them if they had caught anything. There was one very pretty blonde woman on her bike with her boyfriend accompanying her too.

We noted quite a few points where the entry point would be quite good and decided to do the thing after a quick snack. We stopped off at the lock and had a seat in the shade and cracked open a box of chocolate chip cake and bananas. I peered inside my trainer and discovered why my foot was in such pain. The rupture in the lining had created a hard nodule that had risen up and it was digging into my foot. Although my foot hurt, I had not been aware of it. I pulled it out. Then we set back to find the suitable spot to have a wild swim. It took a bit of time to navigate where my friend could get in but we got to it.

As we walked back, which was now less painful, my friend was telling me his theory about fishing. It was, he said, a sport where you hunted in one spot. You were chasing the animal in a stationary position, which made it a unique form of hunting.

My friend stripped off and got into his trunks and then went into the river. I had decided not to go in because I had caught a few things in the past from swimming and had been advised not to do anything by my girlfriend in addition. So I took some action shots of my friend. The water looked very cool, refreshing and invigorating and my friend told me that it was indeed. I was tempted to get in but decided that it was good enough to sit on a towel on the riverbank in the shade and to live the experience vicariously through my friend.

We drove down next to Southend on Sea next, to some parts that I had never been before like Thorpe Bay, although I had been to the grammar school there for seven years. When we got there, we happened upon a Toby Carvery so I treated us to a big roast as a thank you to my friend for driving us all day. It was delicious. I had a king sized platter. He heaped his plate which too much food but amazingly managed to finish it and was completely stuffed afterwards.

After that, we walked along the beach for a few hours. It was windy at first and it was messing around my hair which was annoying, as I am quite self-conscious about it. However, it was an amazing walk. We were scanning the ground for interesting shells and jellyfish of which there were many. I was picking up stones and admiring them and we skimmed some across the surface of the sea, although my friend was much better at this than me. My foot was still in considerable pain – in the evening I would see that there was a massive blister there. We managed twenty five thousand steps in the day though by the end. If there’s one thing that anyone knows about me, it is that I can endure a lot of pain and I don’t like to give up.

We came across a lady feeding seagulls which was quite a picturesque sight and I wish that I had taken a few photos of it after getting her permission. A blonde lady with a family took some photos of me and my friend on the beach at my request. She was a pro apparently and took a number of shots, although the final version that we went with was just the one straight forward shot that she took as my friend was not a fan of the diagonal angles. At one point, we walked though a massive Afro Caribbean party on the beach.

I went back to Toby’s Carvery at the end and got myself a chocolate brownie sundae. My friend was still full and didn’t want one. We had a final look at the sea as my friend had suggested some more wild swimming but now it was slightly colder and he had eaten a little too much so we gave it a miss. Then, at the end, what was there but the drive home? We listened to Dan TDM with video game music on Classical FM, discussing which sounds were palatable or not. The foot was super sore in the evening.