Looking back through our photos of Finland, I’m struck by the texture of the images.It’s a cliché to say that no two snowflakes are the same, or to talk of winter wonderlands, but the reasons behind those tropes come alive in these photos. It’s a mesmerizing sight to see the shape of each individual fleck … Read more
When the sky turns lilac, I know my day is nearly done. The trees fade into the horizon and make way for the nighttime sky. I’ll miss the stars when we move to the city. Four months worth of days have passed at this window from Autumn into Winter sun. People say England is grey. … Read more
A few months ago I met Lionel Shriver. She believes that enjoyment lies in anticipation, and experience is always a disappointment in comparison to what we imagined. When she said this she was talking about food. The pizzas we lust after and the foreign food we long to return to. I took objection to her stance. … Read more
In Berlin we achieved something extraordinary. It centers around a kebab. Döners are a staple of British life, normally ingested around 1am with a side order of cheesy chips, and an after-effect of sickness. Whether the nausea comes from the meat itself or its concoction with copious alcohol is hard to define, but the term … Read more
Sometimes places inspire a picture painted with words. Helsinki in its winter dress did plenty to provoke poetry, but now is time for some more practical prose. Our reasons to love Helsinki First, this image of how it made us feel: An unlikely Tango The Finns love to Tango, so much so that they have … Read more
Steve’s beard is made of ice and the snow is dancing to the shape of the wind. We smile, enchanted by the magic of winter. We’re arrived to the first snowfall of the season, the Finns delighting in relief from the darkness. It was a black Christmas in Helsinki, a rare and unwelcome occurrence. Winter … Read more
One of the reasons we were drawn to Bali was a school. We’re not planning on having kids anytime soon nor do we even know if that’s a path we’ll go down, but we realised when we were in San Pancho that when it comes to choosing a place to live, good education options might … Read more
Eleven years ago, I saw a boy dressed in a red hat, a red hoodie and a pair of baggy blue jeans. Looking at him that day, intuition and a skip of the heart told me that there was a story to be written between us. It took some time to get going – we were … Read more
I’m writing this with some homemade cookies and a coffee complete with milk. Dairy, wheat, caffeine, sugar, it’s all there and it’s glorious. I’ve been in rebellion mode for a month now. Two months of austerity in Ubud came to a crashing close at the Writers and Readers Festival where the arrival of the literary elite pushed away my … Read more
As we approached our last weekend in Bali, we realised we’d only managed to visit the beach once in our entire five months there. Both of us had been so busy on our various projects that we’d had little time off, and Ubud kept us more than entertained for the leisure time we did have. … Read more