Hamnet film review

The only thing I knew about Hamnet before I went to see it was that a child named Hamnet dies in it, and that it is based on the life of William Shakespeare via the book called Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. A couple of weeks before I went to see it, Jessie Buckley started scooping every seasonal film award going for her role in it, which piqued my interest.

Buckley plays Agnes, which is the name Anne Hathaway goes by in the film. Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare. I am surprised Mescal has not won any awards for his portrayal (yet) because his Shakespeare, with his stuttering writer’s block moments, his pensive contemplation, his vulnerability, and more, is a delight to watch.

I did not expect to be punched in the stomach so hard, so repeatedly, with so much force! I did not expect something so beautiful, so wow, so oh my god. So clever, so pleasing on so many levels, so all coming together so heart-meltingly in the end.

It begins slowly and unfolds steadily. The forest landscape is painted with care, and the misty rolling fields set the right tone. The hawk and the glove motifs might feel cliched to start with, but, but they make sense later on.

What we get in Hamnet is a Hamlet backstory, as imagined by Maggie O’Farrell and presented perfectly on screen by everybody involved.

A tearjerker, an emotional rollercoaster, a feast for the eyes, Jessie Buckley is gorgeous in it, Paul Mescal is ever so good, the Hamnet actor Jacobi Jupe is pulling at the heartstrings with all the ruthlessness an innocent child can convey.

When the final section of the film begins, with Hamlet on stage at the Globe, or is it the Rose, and suddenly it all comes together, and it takes your breath away, well, my breath away anyway, and it’s one of those brief intense moments when we feel alive, when it’s all worth it, when the spoken word reaches out to us through the centuries, all the way to the Everyman sofa in Crystal Palace, when to be or not to be loses its tired overuse, and I feel like joining Agnes when she physically reaches out and touches the hand of Hamlet on stage.

The theme of Shakespeare’s play on stage within a film about Shakespeare has been done before, probably most famously in recent years in Shakespeare in Love, possibly the only time Gwyneth Paltrow fully delivered the goods. Now Shakespeare in Love has a serious competition in Hamnet.

Shakespeare the dad comes painfully alive and everything in the Danish Play suddenly fits the film’s idea of how it came to be. It is of course only an idea, a version of Shakespeare’s creative universe which in all probability was not true, but it fits, it fits! Which is why I left the cinema believing that it could have been conceived and written the way I had just watched, as an expression of father’s grief and the way of saying goodbye to his son, something he could not do in person, as he had arrived home too late.

I tried to upload a close-up from the film, but my WordPress editing tool told me I was not allowed to, probably something to do with copyright policing. So I am uploading a couple of photos showing the comfort and the luxury of Everyman, Crystal Palace.

Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

Oops, I did it again. At Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

Madness is booking myself on another guided tour at another obscure London tourist attraction, run by retired volunteers and expect not to be bored to within an inch of my life.

Still, this is exactly what I did, when, after last month’s Crossness Pumping Station experience, I thought that a good way to spend the first Sunday of 2026 was to book a fun family day out at the Croydon Airport Visitor Centre in Purley Way.

To be fair, Croydon Airport did pop up in an after dinner conversation a couple of days before, and somebody did show more than a fleeting interest in the topic, although I will never know whether it was genuine, or because he is a perfectly well-mannered polite person, but anyway. I did look it up and Google said it was only open to visitors once a month on the first Sunday of each month, and it also said the tour would take about 45 minutes, and it sounded reasonable and it was only 20 minutes drive and we had no other plans, so we went.

Croydon Airport has the potential of making Croydonians proud of their history. As you are not likely to hear, ‘I am from Croydon and proud’, many times in your lifetime, this is not something to be sneezed at.

Croydon Airport boasts the world’s first air control tower, and it claims its place in history as London’s first commercial flights airport.

The airport was operational on its current Purley Way site between 1928 and 1959, when its conceded defeat to Heathrow. Apparently something to do with grassy fields around Croydon which did not make good runways, as opposed to concrete runways at Heathrow. The last airplane to take off from Croydon flew to Rotterdam. Yes, I did listen to some of it.

The place is interesting, the nostalgic spirit of yesteryear air travel becomes a palpable reality in the many rooms we went through.

Dress code rules for air travel were intriguing, the fact that the passengers were being weighed in before the flight was amusing. I was happy to learn about Amy Johnson’s solo flights and that it took 19 days to fly to Australia.

I am glad I saw it, but, My Dear Newly Born Baby Jesus, the tour did not half drag on!

Two hours! Two hours of technical detail after technical detail, information on propellers, re-fuelling, runway rules, history of airline name changes, as well as going over each map and diagram on each wall, the whole shebang.

My daughter and I would have been happy to see the artefacts, read the signs and notices, or not, and be out and inside Costa Coffee across the road within the promised 45 minutes.

Unfortunately, sneaking out early was not really an option, as the air control tower, arguably the most exciting part of the tour, was left to the end.

When it was all over, I was ready to apologise to my companions for the length of the tour, but curiously, the men in our group claimed they had found it fascinating and not at all too long. They must be the most well-mannered, most polite men in Croydon.

1st of January. Happy Birthday to all Afghans in the UK

Afghan refugees in the UK celebrate their birthdays on the 1st of January. This is the date of birth the Home Office assigns to them on arrival in the country.

My understanding about the reasons why is that the exact date of birth is not something Afghans attach much importance to.

This is especially true of remote rural areas of Afghanistan, where keeping paper records is not high on the agenda.

Unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrive in the UK usually know what age they are, as this is the information their parents are likely to have given them, but they do not know the day or the month they were born. The 1st of January is given to them as a simplified, easy to remember practical date.

As a result of this, a lot of Afghans in the UK send Happy Birthday to All of Us messages on the first day of the year.

This gives our family a great reason to end the Christmas season with a veritable feast at Watan restaurant in Tooting every year.

It grants us one extra day before the New Year’s resolutions kick in, because there is no point in starting the New Year New Abs health drive hours before consuming Watan Family Special Mixed Grill.

After that, there really is nowhere to hide, and the resumption of real life looms big on the horizon.

Off to the gym now.

How to do the London NYE fireworks, by a newly qualified expert

When I told my friends that his year I was going to watch the London New Year’s Eve fireworks not from the safety and the comfort of my sofa but from the banks of the river Thames, they were concerned for my sanity.

One friend even sent me a compelling TikTok reel from a previous year’s disgruntled NYE reveller, in which he called the experience a fing sht, never to be repeated.

To be fair to him, he paid £45 for his ticket, so he was possibly justified in his discontent with a spot behind a row of portaloos behind the London Eye.

Not easily discouraged, and reluctant to change plans once we’ve made them, we went anyway.

It was great!

We did not buy tickets.

We did not camp out by the river from early afternoon.

We did not heed the ubiquitous online advice to leave the car at home.

We drove right into the eye of the storm, and parked a few minutes’ walk from Lambeth Bridge. As I am still buzzing from the night before, I am happy to share my parking slot here, even though one of you is now probably going to take it from me next year. Whitgift Street, free weekday parking from 6.30pm, yards from the NYE road closures.

We got there at 10pm. We walked up to the river and we inititially made a mistake of turning towards the London Eye. We soon noticed that everybody else was heading in the opposite direction, so we turned round and followed the crowd. We walked briskly back towards Lambeth Bridge, but we missed our chance to get on it by a few minutes. The police tannoy announced that the Bridge was now closed and would not reopen before midnight.

We kept walking away from the London Eye, with a new plan to get onto Vauxhall Bridge, which was still open.

In the end we abandoned that idea and settled on a spot half way between the two bridges. It was perfect.
We had less than an hour to wait now, and we spent it chatting, laughing, glancing at the river, checking phones and watches.

From where we stood, the fireworks did not disappoint. Since we had a sideway view of the London Eye, we missed the Wicked 2 product placement entirely, so we had no reason to be ‘outraged’ by it, unlike, allegedly, thousands of ticket-holders watching it face on from the North side of the river.

After the last blasts of the display went down in smoke, an unexpected exhilarating event broke up next to us, as small crowds of Asian men performed energetic dances to music.

The six of us provided momentary entertainment to a nearby group of tourists too, when we linked hands and sang auld lang syne at the top of our voices.

After that it was time to head home and that was the only time we experienced the tiniest teeny little glitch in our otherwise perfect night. We got stuck in back roads traffic for a very long time, which meant that the 6.5 mile journey home took nearly two hours. But we are not here to sweat the small stuff.
We got home at 2.40am and ended the night with Morley’s chicken and chips.

Happy New 2026 to all my Friends and Family!

Ithaca

“Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, left his home many years ago and has not returned. This is his story.”

This is the opening line of my debut book, The Odyssey, which I wrote at the age of 7.

It was inspired by the TV series of the same title, which was showing in Poland at the time. I loved the storyline, and started writing long before the brave Trojan War hero returned to the shores of his kingdom.

I felt I was onto something special, and hoped that nobody else would have the same idea and that I would be the only one who put it onto paper. When, two months later my parents told me that some guy called Homer had beaten me to it 28 centuries before, I sulked for a week.

Amelia and I stayed in Kefalonia for ten days earlier this month. Ithaca is a stone’s throw from Kefalonia, 45 minutes by ferry to be precise, so we knew it had to be done. We booked ourselves on a day trip to the tiny island and it was lovely.

Ithaca has no tourist resorts or sandy beaches to speak of, but it still attracts large number of visitors, mainly day-trippers like us, brought here on the strong winds of cultural, literary and historical snobbery.

Ithaca’s entire PR effort is geared towards Odysseus and Homer. The statues are everywhere. The port of Sami, where ferries to Ithaca depart from, features Odysseus Theme Park.

Our guide, Vanna, spoke pretty much non-stop. If I had a Euro for each time she described something as ‘gorgeous’, I could have probably paid for the pork souvlaki and Greek salad lunch for everybody on the coach. To be fair to Vanna, Ithaca is gorgeous.

Our first stop was Vathy, the island’s capital. Amelia and I took a long walk around the bay, snapping happy as we went.

After that, it was a hairpin bend ascent to the Kathara Monastery, which offered us, yes, you guessed it, gorgeous views of the coastline.

Next stop was Kioni, for an unrushed lunch break. Kioni, like every other village in Ithaca, was a quaint little place, busy with sailboats coming and going at a steady pace.

Our final stop was Stavros, hailed as the Odysseus birthplace, but I had a strong suspicion we stopped there mainly so that Vanna was able to earn her commission from a local cafe. She herded us inside and gently nudged us towards the ‘local delicacy’, a rice and honey sweet called Rovani. It was an okay tasting rice pudding, which Amelia polished off happily.

Athens

This post is based on my trip to Athens in September 2023. I wrote it, saved it in the drafts folder and promptly forgot it. Publishing now, because I think it can be quite useful for any good people debating whether to check out Athens or head straight to the islands.

“Athens is not a graceful city. It looks terrible from just about every approach, its air pollution is dire, and its traffic and postwar architecture are a disaster.”

Greece, The Rough Guide

Athens has such bad rep among travel books writers, it sounds almost personal. Having visited Athens earlier this month, I would like to say that the reputation is unfair and undeserved.

My daughter Amelia and I spent three days in Athens.

First half day was dutifully taken up by the Acropolis.

September is meant to be the month when the tourist traffic begins to calm down, but it was still pretty heaving on the uphill paths.

Despite every website telling us to, we did not pre-book, and spent about half an hour queuing up for the Acropolis tickets. There was one, ONE digital ticket machine available.

Tip: Acropolis, as well as every other piece of antiquity in Athens, is free of charge for under-25 EU citizens, the photo on the phone is sufficient to prove your European provenance.

The Acropolis hill was everything we were hoping for. It was beautiful, humbling, moving, fascinating, amazing, ancient, awe-inspiring, thought provoking and full of cats.

When we got our fill of the Parthenon, Theatre of Dionysus, and the rest of it, we walked down to the Roman Agora, followed by the Ancient Agora, where we feasted our eyes on the Temple of Hephaestus, the Stoa of Attalos, and more cats. It was so beautiful and peaceful, we stayed until closing time.

The Acropolis done, we could relax and spent the next day walking around the city. We set off from our accommodation, Kolonaki Nest (a masterpiece of Booking.com creative photography, but it served the purpose of giving us a bed in Athens), stopped for breakfast at Syntagma Square, and headed towards Panathenaic Stadium, followed by the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and ended up near the Acropolis again, loitered around tourist shops and restaurants in Plaka and took the Metro back to Syntagma, and took the funicular to the top of Lycabettus Hill (Lykavitos) for the most stunning views of Athens and beyond. Highly recommended, if a little bit out of the way.

After Lycabettus, we went back to Syntagma Square, which was a great find. It is the main square in Athens, the Greek Parliament building stands to the side of it, and it also turns into the roadman capital of Athens by night.

In the true Heasley sightseeing style, we clocked up well over 25,000 steps that day. We would have done even more, but were frequently slowed down by cats. Amelia is physically incapable of walking past a cat without stopping to stroke them, and take several carefully composed photos of them. And there are a lot of cats in Athens.

The third and last day in Athens, we took a bus to Cape Sounion and the dramatically placed Temple of Poseidon, which was just under two hours drive along the coast. We spent the whole day hanging about Cape Sounion, waiting for the sunset, when Amelia took hundreds of photos, and we took the last bus back to Athens.

Champagne sunset trips to Cape Sounion are being sold to cruise ship loads of Americans daily, and, unbelievable as it sounds, they really do sip the bubbly from elegant champagne flutes, perched on the rocks around the temple, by their thousands.

And finally.

Do not listen to disparaging guidebook opinions, and go to Athens! It is a great place to spend a few days. Amelia and I had the best time there.

The only word of advice, you would be wise to skip the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The best thing about it is its name. Other than that, it’s just two tall columns and a lot of scaffolding, on the side of a football stadium size load of burnt grass and rubble. Still, you will probably ignore my advice and head to the Temple of Zeus on your second day in Athens, like we did, because he is Zeus, the big guy.

Taghazout Last Day. Final bits and bobs.

Time flows differently here. The practice of looking at your watch every few minutes is virtually unknown. If you only have half an hour for a coffee, or an hour for a tagine, you might run out of time in some Taghazout seafront restaurants.

Cats are everywhere. On the beach, on the chair next to you in a cafe, under your table. There are thousands of them and new ones are born all the time. Not all of them are in the best of health, some of them look like they’ve been in wars.

Taghazout is a cash only village. Leave your cards safely locked away in your room with your passport.

Everything is cheap, but because it’s so cheap, it’s only too easy to lose track of how much you spend a day on all these cheap things.

When you are buying souvenirs, and you hear that something costs 200 dirhams, please say 150 or go as low as you dare. Mild haggling is expected as part of every transaction with street sellers. You will know when you’ve gone too low, because they will stop smiling and will shake their heads firmly. I was mindful not to go too low in Taghzaout. I did that years ago in Egypt, the seller walked away, and as he did, he shouted at me ‘you no good woman!’. I felt ashamed and very small. Since then, I have probably overpaid for many bracelets and fridge magnets, just to make sure I did not offend a North African market trader again.

Be careful who and what you photograph. Do not try to take sneaky snaps of old men in their hooded jalebi robes. The ones who look most Instagram worthy already know it and they do not wish to feature in your reel. When they spot what you are doing, they will shake their walking sticks at you in a menacing way, and will give you a dirty look and you will feel ashamed of yourself, as you should.

Dress code. To state the obvious, Morocco is a Muslim country. You will be more comfortable wearing loose modest clothing to blend in and to show respect for the culture. Leave sexy outifts for Magaluf or somewhere they will be appreciated. Tshirts and 3/4 trousers or long skirts rather than short shorts and revealing vests in town. Beachwear on the beach only.

Taghazout Day 7. Skate park, goats and thoughts on solo travelling.

Today I allowed myself to get up a little later than usual. I was woken up by the rooster and the morning call to prayer at around 6.30 but I fell asleep as soon as the eager chicken and the muezzin stopped their invocations.

I woke up again at 8.50, got dressed and went up for the rooftop breakfast.

There are now five Polish people at the hostel, all in their twenties. They were talking, I listened. It was fascinating, because I quickly realised that I was unfamiliar with this kind of young Polish people.They were not the same Polish people I worked with in London. They were much more like the young English people I knew, but they spoke Polish.

After breakfast, I followed my son’s advice to look for ‘trash goats’ who lived at the very top of the village and ate rubbish, hence the name.

I turn left of my front door, kept walking up, and sure enough, I found a group of goats. They were eating rubbish, just as my son said they would be.

After the goats, I went all the way down to the main street, you need to be fit to walk up and down Taghazout.

I had the whole day ahead of me all to myself, until dinner date with my son.

I decided to start with another climb up, this time to the skate park. It was worth it. A great viewpoint and the skaters were on top of their game. I stayed there for at least an hour, snapping happy.

After that, I did some trinket shopping. Bought a few pieces, not sure now if they are going to be gifts for other people or for myself. I did some half-hearted haggling with the sellers, got the first asking prices down a notch, which I am pretty sure was still well above their last price.

The shopping done, at least for today, I felt hungry, so I went for a simple lunch of cheese omelette and a coffee.

After lunch, I decided that my frantic morning activities, the goats, the skate park, and the shopping needed to be balanced out by a relaxing afternoon at the beach. I walked past the main surfing crowd, paid 30 dirhams for a deckchair, and read my book for a few of hours.

Deckchairs are folded away at 6pm, so I got walking again. Sunset was at 7.29, I made sure I got a good view of it at the small beach in Taghazout centre and let myself be mesmerised by the daily show of the big ball of light going down.

After sunset I met my son and his friend for dinner at Cafe Tayoughte. Chicken tagine and Moroccan tea, lots of talking and laughter. I got to my hostel around 9.45pm, went through the daily black tea ritual on he rooftop, WhatsApped with family back in England, and read Flowers for Algernon before sleep.

The best thing about travelling solo is that I can do only the things I want to do and at the pace I want to do them. I choose how long to sit over breakfast, without having to respond to ‘shall we make a move then?’, or having to be the one asking the question if my companions take taking their time to an absurd level.

Today I chose how long to stay at the skate park and I chose how to fill my whole day. In the evening I felt that I did everything exactly how I wanted to.

The worst thing about travelling solo, for me, is having nobody to share my reactions to what I see and how I feel the moment I see and feel it. Today, that meant nobody to comment to on the skate boarders amazing skills, and nobody to discuss how close I should come up to the goats, especially that there were two baby goats among the group and perhaps a protective goat parent might try to chase me away if I came too close.

If it hadn’t been for dinner with my son, the only conversation I would have had all day today would have been with a metal detectorist guy, who was also the person in charge of the deckchairs. He showed me his loot, several old looking half-rusted coins. He tried to tell me something about them, but he had no English, and my French is, well, let’s not dwell on it. He said something with the word fifty in it.

The freedom to do what I want and the aloneness of it clash constantly in my mind.

I cannot decide if I like it or not. I enjoy the free moments, and I love Taghazout, I think that it is one of the perfect places to go solo. Logically, I am also aware that in a few short days I will be back home, no longer solo. The jury is out. I will keep debating the topic tomorrow, another day with me, myself and I.

Taghazout Day 5 and 6. Who comes here?

Things have slowed down the last couple of days, as the Taghazout choppy waves wash away my frantic London pace of life and I find myself staring into the sea a lot.

I thought a bit more about the kind of people who come here. Now that I have spent the full four days in Taghazout, I am a bona fide expert on the place. Obviously.

I guess the first step in the natural selection of visitors comes when prospective Taghazout travellers ask themselves the all-important question, do we want to spend our holiday in a place where we cannot have a beer or a glass of wine with our dinner? If the answer is no, they cross Taghazout off their list, and book Tenerife, again. Win win for everybody.

The absence of drunken thrill-seekers makes a big difference.

The majority of people who come here have indifferent relationship.with alcohol, and the fact that Taghazout restaurants do not serve any is of no consequence to them. There are exceptions.

Trigger warning: national stereotyping ahead.

The other night, a man with a very strong Irish accent joined the rooftop dinner crowd. He introduced himself and after rushing through some rudimentary small talk, he asked, where one can get a drink around here. After a short silence, somebody said, I am not sure but I think there are some bars at the end of the village. The rest stayed silent and the Irishman got up and said his goodnights. The next day he came late for dinner, told the group that he had checked out the bars, and yes, they served beer there, but it was very expensive, London prices, London was where he lived by the way, and they did not have much of a range. Again, he was greeted by hushed silence from the rooftop audience. He checked out the next morning.

European visitors who come to Taghazout are here either on a hardcore surfing holiday or they book themselves for an extended stay which combines surfing with remote working. The latter makes them digital nomads, the holy grail of economically active generations.

Taghazout digital nomads is a catch-all phrase for anybody who fits in regular work into their Moroccan lifestyle, be it as an employee or an entrepreneur, working on an existing business or laying foundation for their next big thing. To become a digital nomad you need to announce that you are one, a laptop, and the self-discipline to actually do some work.

Digital nomads enjoy an elevated status compared to plain holiday makers, the name itself has a vague Star Wars ring to it. They live slowly and mindfully, they dabble in creativity and spiritual renewal, they do not do all the touristy things all at once, if at all, and they eat a lot of couscous.

If you fancy yourself as a digital nomad in Taghazout, you want to search for accommodation with the word ‘co-working’ in the name. Co-working place is still basically a surf hostel, but in addition to a rooftop canteen, it offers another communal space with desks, where the working nomads work. Checking yourself into a coworking place in Taghazout for a couple of months really is a great way to spend your winter.

I found a seahorse on the beach today.

At first he looked like a piece of seaweed as he floated on the surface, but when I looked closer, there was no doubt. I picked him up, put him on wet sand and took a picture. Unfortunately, there was no banana nearby but he was about 10 cm.

And then he spluttered! He was alive, sort of, only just. I jumped. He spluttered again, like somebody who nearly drowns and then they splutter and they are fine. I picked him up by his middle bit and ran back to the water with him, and he kept choking and spluttering and then I hurled him as far out into the sea as I could hurl something which weighed next to nothing.

Taghazout Day 4. Surf life.

I am staying at Onda Surf hostel. Every place in Taghazout seems to be a surf hostel.

If you don’t surf, don’t do yoga, don’t sketch or at the very least are not half way through writing a book, why are you even here?

Onda Surf offers the perfect view of the sea and a long stretch of the Sable D’Or beach. Additionally, I was tricked by booking.com clever photography of Onda’s dreamy balcony into thinking this was going to be my private balcony. It is not. It’s a communal rooftop, a focal point of every surf hostel in Taghazout. Rooftop is where breakfast is served, from 9am to 10.30. Rooftop is where guests bring their sketchbooks, their George Orwells, and their surf stories. It’s where they mingle. It’s where I watch them and where I write.

It’s also where I am most acutely aware of my age, because no matter how earnestly my son tries to convince me otherwise, hostels are ruthlessly agist, even if they do not mean to be. They make me feel I had missed the vibe by 25 years, give or take a few.

In the evenings, I loiter on the rooftop anyway. I come up every night after dinner to make my Lipton Yellow Label.

I align my tea time with the communal dinner time, which gives me a chance to eavesdrop shamelessly whilst my tea mug gives me a reason to be here and the feeling that I belong on the rooftop too. Almost.

The other guests are all surfers, they come from all over Europe. They have strong bodies, piercings, tattoos, and flawless skin. A lot of them smoke, which was a surprise. They wear cool baggy clothes and are all so bloody young. Quite a few of them are here on solo adventures, with no definite end date. They are living their best lives, and they use the rooftop dinner time to swap stories of how their day went.

They are friendly to me, and we have had some perfunctory chats, but I feel acutely out of place. Not badly enough to give up my rooftop tea time, but pretty awkward.

Taghazout beach is a beginner surfer’s paradise. Surfboards are everywhere, and surfers get in your way, cut in front of you along narrow winding streets of Taghzaout, akin to cyclists in London.

They give themselves the right of way, and if you know what’s good for you, you do not argue with a surfboard.

Today I went to Anchor Point, some 20 minutes walk out of town in the opposite direction to the vast long beach on one end of it. Do not ever ask me for directions.

I was told Anchor Point was where more experienced surfers strutted their rubber-clad stuff, so I thought I’d check it out.

I perched myself on a comfy rock, and stared at the sea littered with black figures gyrating acrobatically in gusts of wind. It took me two hours to realise that my brain had not registered a single full surf run. I totally zoned out and could not zone back in.

I got up and walked back to the village. It was time for another cappuccino.

Taghazout has a vegan cafe, called Red Clay. I made a mistake and asked for normal milk with my cappuccino, but normal turned out to be oats milk at the Red Clay.

Put that in your pipe, Costa.