Last week Indonesia shot nine drug smugglers after a decade on death row. Since most were foreigners, the final days saw much megaphone diplomacy: greatest attention going predictably to two (non-white) Australians. Canberra has form here. Its outspoken responses to … Read More »
This morning on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, the Rev Giles Fraser gave a simplistic tour of the selfishness v altruism debate. He didn’t follow the many who rubbish Dawkins without reading his most important work; indeed, he quoted the man … Read More »
A week in Southeast Scotland, with trips across the border to Holy Island and Berwick. Slideshow here.
All lies and jest; still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Paul Simon: The Boxer This is nothing so daring as an attempt at summary; just my quirky take on what the Ho Chi … Read More »
The road to a good time is paved with good intentions. I’m pissed. Again. May Allah strike me down, I’d every intention today of settling in a quite coffee house, cool and airy, to pass a few hours perusing my … Read More »
My mission takes me deep into the covered market. I pass though its outer quadrangular layer of dried fish – pungent but not unpleasantly so – and lethal ironmongery, into the penumbral heart where more banal items are sold by … Read More »
On a bicycle with “up yours Germaine!” emblazoned on its belly, it could not look more incongruous. Insinuating its all-things-considered remarkably graceful path across the tarmac to my feet, the eighteen inch Mekong Catfish dodges tyre and sandaled foot alike … Read More »
I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘how do you do?’ They’re really saying, ‘I love you’. I don’t suppose I’ll live to be a thousand but it’s scarcely less likely that, if I did, I’d see anything more beautiful than … Read More »
In my highly acclaimed Motorbiking I – written last year, also from Vietnam – I told of fishing boats and traffic chaos, towering Buddhas and downing beers, curving alleyways and writhing sea snakes. I’ll return to snakes another time; this … Read More »
Not every email this trip will be on the war. I’ll write a good few of the kind l’ve been sending for years to convey some of the colour of where I am and what befalls. But my infatuation with … Read More »