Indelible Journeys

  • Some weekends are enchanted: Norfolk

    Some weekends are enchanted: Norfolk

    This is my mum Trish and me, with wind and spray in our hair at shingly Salthouse on the Norfolk coast. Sliding over the pebble banks to dip our toes in the waves, nudged forward by the North Sea wind, I felt like a two-pence piece in an arcade coin…

  • Under the canopies: a new view of Malta

    Under the canopies: a new view of Malta

    I’d always thought of Malta as a package-holiday destination; its history and beauty squashed between high-rise hotels. But when I find myself on a quiet patch of the island’s west coast, walking down a gentle slope to the remains of some of the oldest religious sites on earth, I start…

  • Mr Steps

    Mr Steps

    The cyclo driver who took us on a late-afternoon tour of Ho Chi Minh City’s back streets had four teeth, wore a ‘STEPS Musicband’ T-shirt, and referred to Steve as Man. Not in a hippy way, like “Hey man”, but as though Man was Steve’s given name. “Hello, Man. Man! Sit here, Man.…

  • The Number 65 bus

    The Number 65 bus

    In Malta, many vehicles have windscreen stickers bearing slogans: boasts about the kind of journey you might expect to take in them, or a statement about the driver. Among others I’ve seen ‘Hardcore Ride’, ‘Daddy’s Taxi’, ‘Baby Think Twice’ and ‘Life In Heaven’. The last two worried me because they…

  • A Tuscan remedy

    A Tuscan remedy

    They call it Stendhal Syndrome or Florence Syndrome: a psychosomatic illness featuring dizziness, confusion and even hallucinations as a result of overexposure to art. Add Tuscan sunshine and the heady joy of being newly married, and there was no way I could be trusted to meet Michelangelo’s David without falling…