Results tagged “ashes” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

For over 30 years now the last Sunday in April has been bluebell day for the Langley clan. We think of a wood we know where acres of bluebells grow as more or less our own.

It's reached by an unmarked footpath besides fields and then through Forestry Commission tracks, and I've no intention of telling you where it is. It's only been such a well-kept secret because it is inaccessible by car.

It's close to where we used to live when we first decamped to the Midlands from Suffolk, and we've moved a couple of times since, so the annual pilgrimage now involves a bit of travel.

In spite of the next few sentences, this a rave review.

I have reservations about Humble Boy, a huge hit at the National and in the West End for Charlotte Jones. I admire the writer's ambition and sheer cheek in using the emotional framework of the Hamlet story, overlaying it with modern metaphysical musings derived from the abstruse ponderings of people like Stephen Hawking, and seeding it with jokes that would make a Carry On script look over-intellectual.

But it strikes me as contrived and clunky in too many places. Forcing metaphors based on bee-keeping, astrophysics and the yearning for love in dysfunctional families to cross breed leads to some right ungainly offspring fighting for life.