Blanket Yourself
You may think there is nothing better than cocooning your body in a blanket against the coming evening chill. You may think it’s one of life’s little pleasures. A moment of peace and connection. You may think it’s the ultimate...
Category: Travel & History
Being An Expat
You look back over time with something akin to nostalgia. Walking to the train station, hands plunged deep into pockets of a black winter coat, streetlights blinking through the damp mist. City lights reflected in dark canals. Noise spilling like...
Shot At Dawn: In Flanders fields the poppies blow
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row ……… They blew in May 1915 when Canadian army doctor, John McCrae, wrote these immortal lines. They blow today. Colorful memorials of a war-torn world entrenched in the bloody,...
Much Ado About Zika
Out with Ebola – the Zika virus has us all hot under the collar right now ! New? Not really – its been around since the 1950s, but only last year jumped the equatorial belt and went viral all over...
A Day in the Life – Entry in a World War 1 Diary by Malcolm Gough
A Day in the Life My grandfather sailed from Cape Town, South Africa to England on Thursday 10th May 1917 to join the RFC (Royal Flying Corps) in the ‘War to End All Wars’(as World War 1 is commonly known):...
A Walk in the Somme by Malcolm Gough
A hundred years since World War One…. My current view that history is more effectively understood the more you can see it through the eyes of the participants, is put to the test on a bleak winter’s day as I...
El Niño Simplified
We have heard much about El Niño recently – the much maligned phenomenon responsible for some record warm Christmases from New York to Atlanta on the US East coast. “El Niño is wreaking havoc with our weather” is an ice-breaker...
Sailing in Zululand by Lynn Maclachlan
A look at life in post-Apartheid South Africa – The kids in the townships of South Africa run unsupervised in gangs, and when I say gangs, I mostly mean harmless gangs of naughty friends, bored, looking for something to do....
Africa Does Not Exist Anywhere Else
Africa does not exist anywhere else. You can look at pictures and hear stories but it’s not there. It’s not in the smell of rain on your dusty foothills, though that smell is as synonymous with Africa as any. It’s...
Looking at History
The world’s stage beckons. Sometimes the odds are stacked in our favor, a glittering temple of ambition achieved, enemies vanquished and life preserved. Sometimes – stage right – sirens blare and neon warnings blink and airplanes hover, bomb, hurtle to...
