Anna Selby

5 days ago | arbuturian.com | Anna Selby

Spring is here and, for Londoners at least, nothing epitomises this more than the Chelsea Flower Show. This year it’s from the 20th to the 24th of May and, as always, in Royal Hospital Gardens, the lovely park that surrounds the home of the Chelsea Pensioners, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1692. The grounds were originally pleasure gardens with a Rotunda used for balls and where the young Mozart performed for the fashionable 18th century crowds.

1 week ago | arbuturian.com | Anna Selby

When Captain Cook arrived in New Zealand in 1770, his botanist, John Banks, recorded in his diary that the dawn chorus that would awaken him each morning in Queen Charlotte Sound was the most melodious wild music he had ever heard, almost as if the birds were imitating small bells. Of course, there then followed an influx of European migrants who brought with them various animals that preyed on the birds many of which were defenceless – often ground nesting and even flightless.

1 week ago | arbuturian.com | Anna Selby

It can be an eerie sight, watching steam rising from the earth in the morning sunshine. In New Zealand – and particularly in the area around Rotorua – however, it is not an unusual one. New Zealand possesses a very visible level of geothermal activity and in these parts the steam drifts upwards from river banks and parks, even the drains and gutters, and the unmistakable (and not exactly delicate) smell of sulphur hangs in the air.

2 weeks ago | arbuturian.com | Anna Selby

Conor McPherson’s last show at the Old Vic, Girl from the North Country, was phenomenal. A Depression-era musical set in Minnesota may not sound like an uplifting experience but it was joyous, full of McPherson magic and with a bunch of Bob Dylan songs powering it along to the delight of the audience. (Dylan himself is said to have wept when he saw it.)His new offering is The Brightening Air set in an equally economically depressed 1980s County Sligo.

3 weeks ago | aol.co.uk | Anna Selby

No one can accuse German shipbuilders Meyer Werft of a lack of vision. They are, in fact, currently looking far into the future. In 75 years, they tell us, the US will have the same number of over-80s as they do over-65s today. By 2100, then, there might just be a very interesting gap in the market. Instead of a conventional retirement home, octogenarians who still possess a spring in their step might opt instead for the Serenity, a ship designed just for them.