Canada, eh? I could tell you I moved here for the raccoons and bears and the advocacy of lumberjack chic, but these are mere perks. (Although have not seen enough raccoons. Or any bears. And still trying to figure out where the lumberjacks hang out.) I moved here because I wanted – needed – greater proximity to the wild outdoors. Big Nature. To be totally honest with you, when…
“Don’t think of us as human beings having a spiritual experience; rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
Whisky is usually my friend. But cheap whisky and I are, I’ve now come to accept, not on the best of terms. At my AirBnB I was several drams of $8 Canadian Club down as I waited for the new friend I’d made in Montreal to let me know when he and his friends got to the bar they’d…
It’s the middle of April in Quebec City, the sun is high and the sky is a cool, clear blue. Not that you’d know it was Spring. The city is frozen: framed in snow drifts, carpeted in ice. As I walked around in the early morning, I have to tred carefully, minding each step doesn’t land me on my…
In a New Zealand-inspired coffeeshop in central Toronto, the young, hip Canadian barista is making me a dirty chai – that’s a chai latte with an all-important shot of espresso: possibly the greatest crossover of all time – while we discuss The State of Things. “The world feels so crazy right now,” says the barista, with…
I was probably feeling a little too pleased with myself. That must have been it. A Monday morning, up before the dawn, I had – swaddled in my faux fur coat, my comfy trainers on and coffee held jauntily aloft – sailed through all the usual scans and checks to take my seat on a Eurostar. It was a day trip to Paris; a…
“Today I will be happier than a seagull with a stolen chip.” So declared the sign in the pub, where seven of us filled up on fish-finger sandwiches and pints of ale ahead of a blustery walk across the Seven Sisters. I can’t believe I’d not been to Eastbourne before – especially as I actually grew up in another Eastbourne, in Wellington, New Zealand.…
I couldn’t tell you exactly when I became an introvert, but somewhere between the constant craving for company in my early twenties and the sudden delight at cancelled plans in my early thirties, I turned into one. Time on my own is as necessary to my ability to function as physical exercise. Or coffee. And while introverts…
Messing about on boats is one of those innate New Zealand pastimes that come with the territory of a Kiwi upbringing. (Ironically, this upbringing included many a warning that one should never actually “mess about” on a boat. ‘Have fun in the water but do what you oughta’, right kids?) Growing up, my dad would take my brothers…
It seemed so unlikely, this Brexit nonsense. Something that sounded like a cereal and was promoted by the likes of Nigel ‘I’m-not-racist-but’ Farage and Boris ‘I’m-stuck-on-a-zip-line’ Johnson was surely a bit of a joke. This whole idea about pulling the UK out of the European Union; they couldn’t be serious, could they? I’m certain it was only a small percentage of…
The plane has been there since 1973. To look at the thing now – the torso of an aircraft, riddled with bullets, left to erode on a black beach in southern Iceland – you’d imagine something sinister happened. A tragic crash, a plane shot down in battle, a Bermuda-triangle-style missing airliner. The eeriness of this rusting wreck is its greatest allure. If you’d prefer to keep it…
Funny, isn’t it, the things you get self-conscious about. My whole life I quietly resented little quirks of my features – my nose, my teeth, the usual things people fret over, worrying how they look to the rest of the world, despite the fact that all anyone else thinks is that it’s just your FACE.…
Today in the moments after waking I discovered two things: 1) that David Bowie wasn’t an immortal being, and 2) that all this time I had actually believed that he was. But Bowie had died. Cancer. One he had never announced. Lying in the dark, at 6am on a Monday morning, pitch black and rain…
Considering my interest in food (preoccupation, some might say), there will always arise the question of what I don’t like. And for a long time my answer would elicit surprise. COFFEE. I couldn’t stand it. It was the only thing I detested, the last hurdle of flavour that I’d yet to conquer; I’d sooner stuff…
Any good city, no matter how much it might threaten to dent your wallet, is packed with free things to see and do. So even on a shoestring you can still taste a slice of the Big Apple. You will want to invest in a transport card – $30 will get you a pass that…
Comedy and death seem so terribly contrary and yet are so inextricably linked, that last week when I heard Rik Mayall had died, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What do you MEAN Rik Mayall’s dead? *snort* As IF. It was a joke! And you fell for it… like the facist you are!…
My all-time favourite perfume is Chanel Coco Mademoiselle. I coveted it for years, and eventually, in the days of being broke and freelance, I spent the paycheck from my first published article on a bottle of it. Even now I wear it every day because I love the way it smells and the way it…