Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Mary Anne Hall and her Grandchildren, Click on the photo to enlarge it This is the fourth  of a series of photos taken at Tenby beach of the Hall family and members of the Sultan family. The date is 1912. The lady looking like the duchess in Alice in wonderland is Mary Anne , Great Great Grandmother Hall. Our Great Great Grandfather, William Hall-Riddick, a sea captain, was either unfaithful to her or left her for another woman. Mary Anne's daughters, Lucy, May and Gertrude became suffragettes and her son, who she sent to schools in Bonn, Freiburg and Schwehn became a Fellow of the Royal Society and married another suffragette, Rosalie. Gertrude Hall, her oldest daughter, went to India and married the secretary to the Maharajah of Gwalior . They had three children together: the boy on the left, with the worried expression on his face, the boy in the middle, and the pretty girl in the chemise; Edith Sultan, who is looking at her grandmother, who in turn seems oblivious

 Ed Davey held to task Ed Davey, LibDem MP and Undersecretary of State for Business In a conversation an hour ago, Ed Davey insisted that if it wasn't for their participation in the government then things would have been much worse. We act as a brake on the Tories and are able to introduce a lot of policies that we are proud of. Look, I said. I voted against the Tories, but thanks to you, I've got a Tory government. N o, you got a LibDem MP and we've done a lot to look after people. He gave me some examples. We've helped disadvantaged children... He continued. Blunket , and Reed and others came on TV and ruled out the possibility of a  coalition with the Labour government anyway. And it would have been a minority government. What we see, I said, the people on the left who supported the LibDems because  of their green policies and tuition fees and so on, is that  you are all like Nick Clegg. You  have no red Lines. There are no deal breakers for you. Loo

Jim Higgins was Dad's boss at Events , the Middle East companion magazine to the Arabic Al Hawadess and then Dad's good friend. He was a very witty intelligent man. Roger Protz in his obituary in the Guardian said that Jim: 'was one of the most remarkable and didactic figures in the British revolutionary socialist movement of his time, someone who drew generations of people to independent, libertarian Marxism. He was also the best-read and mos t truly scholarly person I have known.' I met him and his better half Jane on the occasions they came down to visit us in Brighton. I didn't understand a lot of the jokes because they were in-jokes and a lot of them were filthy and I was only 17. But I laughed anyway.

Daffodils, Nod if you remember, Were the Yellow lamps Silk screened And Printed Onto the postcards You sent Me (when you were 17) Daffodils, Are  Untimely; They Bud And  flower unexpectedly; When we're unready, And so, In return, We pluck them Unwarned. Daffodils, When their stalks, Copper green, Are clipped From bulbs Blooming in Flower beds, Upstand When put in vases, Dead. Daffodils,  In pretty fasci, Are for sale In London stalls. In spring  And smell of galantamine. . Here! I bought you a Daff.