Can I look in your makeup bag?

Whenever I travel with my oldest three friends, the ones I grew up with and love the best, there is always a moment on the trip, usually when we are getting ready to go out, where we end up snooping in each other's makeup bags. It is one of the most revealing aspects of an...

Putting Trust To The Test

I'm my 'Thrill Seekers Need Not Apply' post I told you about my unflinching (perhaps miss-guided) faith in my fellow man. Yesterday I put one fellow in particular to the test in a slightly foolhardy experiment.  It had been four days since we arrived at the windswept desert island of Sal which is one of...

Travel Light Part 2

As I stood this morning on the shores of a shipwreck strewn desert island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean it was with a surprising sense of pride that I unfurled a little RNLI kite. It all started years ago on a long sandy beach at Kilmuckridge in Ireland. (An unpromising name admittedly, but...

Thrill-seekers need not apply.

It would be true to say that reaching forty-four without serious incident, kidnapping or catastrophe is nothing more than a miracle for someone like me. A particular flaw, if you can call it that, is absolute trust in my fellow human to not be a pick-pocket or a con-artist, least of all a rapist or...

Travel Light

Ever had that first-world problem of which beach bag to take on holiday with you? Oh, the agonies! Stylish straw, a la Toast or Plumo, is earthy, worthy and organic but doesn't double up very well as an in-flight bag. It doesn't fold away neatly into your tiny suitcase either. Giant woven flat-bottomed confections, with...

Measuring Up

Holidays offer a wonderful opportunity to watch humans. To notice the little differences between them and sometimes the staggering chasms that separate us.  This morning, poolside, the first of these daily revelations occurred.  Before we left the chilly shores of Blighty, my nine-year old daughter persuaded me to procure a 'three piece mermaid bathing costume'....

Coping with Economy

On a six hour flight from Manchester to Cape Verde inside a tiny cigar case with wings, it's the 'little things' that get on your tits: Spontaneous scouse cackling, (nothing against Wirral folk, but they do have volume control issues) Unexpected outbursts of 'self expression' from other people's offspring, one of whom is allowed to...