I feel a bit guilty about the fact that we even had a honeymoon, truth be told, because we already travel so much and everyone was so generous to chip in for it. But when we booked it we had no idea that I’d be heading off for a year… Read More Love letter to Japan
I just read that Skye Gyngell’s new restaurant opens today at Somerset House in London. Whenever I think of that beautiful building, I think back to a moment in December 2005 when I stood in front of it, watching the ice skaters whizz by on the temporary outdoor skating rink installed for the winter. Skye Gyngell, by the way,… Read More Petersham Nurseries Cafe and other fine dining memories
To be perfectly honest I remember almost nothing about my long-ago visit to Avignon, a pretty but sleepy medieval town in the south of France. I never imagined I would return, let alone to attend the city’s major performing arts festival, Festival d’Avignon, and its fringe, ‘Le OFF‘. Although the festival is now in its… Read More Festival d’Avignon et le OFF, the biggest theatre in the world (‘Le plus grand théâtre du monde’)
Years ago, on a trip to Darwin, I remember reading a rather maudlin novella by Ian McEwan called ‘On Chesil Beach‘. The young couple in the story don’t come out of their honeymoon intact because the seaside trip brings up all kinds of problems and reveals the cracks in their new marriage. Thankfully, our relationship… Read More Discovering the old and the new in Kyoto
The drive from Townsville to Cairns was different kinds of picturesque – at one point, we were right behind a four wheel drive sporting a sticker that said ‘Fuck off, we’re full’! – but mostly we crawled through roadworks repairing the damage of 2011 Cyclone Yasi, drove over railway crossings and passed by endless cane… Read More From the Far North to the Far East
The Travels of Elephant Woman 