Damascus - and Waddesdon

A quick note to share these beautiful photographs, taken by my colleague, who co-ordinated the ceramics exhibition I worked on and lived with in Damascus for five weeks at the end of last year - she has captured some really serene and beautiful moments in the life of that great and ancient city, as well as some of the other places in Syria which she managed to get away to visit during her rather stress-packed extended stay there. Check them out.

And while I am on the subject of photos - this now being March (where does the time go??), it is time to share with you our calendar image for this month.

Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire © KR

This rather grand façade is the back of Waddesdon Manor, the extremely over-the-top home of the Rothschild family, built between 1874 and 1889 to house both them and their important art collection, and which we visited at Easter last year. Among the objects in this collection are an ivory casket painted with designs in the Islamic style, made in 12th-century Sicily, and a fine lustre flower pot from 15th-century Valencia. I had suggested a trip with the sneaky hope that I might get to see either of these objects, but sadly the gallery displaying highlights of the collection was closed, or we did not find it - though by that point I didn't care too much, since it was supposed to be a day off from work! The house and its furnishings were that weird kind of construction that seems to have been so popular among the late 19th-century super rich - I encountered many more examples among the 'Robber Barons' of New York, when I was in that august city last autumn, and was searching for traces of the fever for the 'Moorish' style that was so popular among international wealthy elites. The Waddesdon collection is largely French and 18th-century - not at all to our taste - encased within a glamorous house that also purports to be from that period, but is late 19th-century. It's a little bit weird, but exceedingly opulent, and we decided just to give ourselves up to the aesthetic experience, which was refreshingly unrelated to anything we know or really care about!

Getting there by public transport was a challenge - we had quite a long walk from and to the station, and were not very impressed with all the other visitors who swept past us up the long drive in their 4x4s, and not a single person stopped to offer us a lift...! The walk was pleasant, though on the way back a snow blizzard started up, which we were not at all prepared for - but it was beautiful, and the thing I remember with most fondness about the day.

More soon - when I have time to write - about our very pleasant family weekend away in Swansea. It's my father's birthday today! A good omen, I think, given that today is also the day I have moved into an office of my own to begin the work of writing my book, which can no longer be ignored - and the day my sister starts a new job! And a beautiful warm sunny day as well, so it almost felt like spring - a true new beginning?