We’re told our quaint old friend in the back garden was hand-built in the sixties by a lady who was a BBC gardening writer and avid nature-lover. She planted just about everything we have: the honeysuckle, bamboo, roses, apple trees, as well as digging a terrific little pond whose Rana temporaria leave us [...]

Kerouac’s On the Road is one of the all-time great books about the road journey. Joni Mitchell’s Amelia might be considered a pretty good song too about the spirit of flight:
“I pulled into the cactus tree motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed [...]

It is Thursday and I have allowed myself a few hours fresh air along the Thames. If it’s next Tuesday, it must be a biscuit factory in Belgium with my colleague Alain. So after many days tediously spent keywording and captioning pictures where I’ve been questioned for standing too near military perimeter fences, [...]

My old college friend Dave e-mails me overnight from Melbourne:
“30 degrees, blue skies,” he basks, “Across the bay for lunch .. 15 knot southerly in the pm to take us home in 90 minutes .. perfect.”
I squint at his attachment. He’s leaning on the rail of some sort of yacht or ketch (if [...]