Author: unwrapping

reflective, agitated, sometimes melancholy, articulate, explorer, hopefully creative, reasonably hopeful.

By the Seat of my Pants

Life has a mischievous habit of tossing us a surprise or two when we least expect it. We never know when we wake in the morning what the day will bring. The day stretches before us like a tablecloth on a long banqueting table. Who knows what delights will laid out and be served up?…

Secrets of Successful Shopkeepers

They say that the customer is always right. I guess whoever first said that was a customer. So they must be right. I have worked in retailing for the best part of 30 years. Rather inevitably I guess as I come from a line of retailers. Although in those days they were called shopkeepers.

OUTRAGE

Outrage shouts at us with mock indignation from the pages of our newspapers. ~OUTRAGE AS THAI WOMAN PAINTS WITH HER BOOBS ON TV ~OUTRAGE OVER EMMANUEL FRIMPONG TWEET ~TIME MAGAZINE COVER SHOWING MOTHER BREASTFEEDING SON, 3, SPARKS OUTRAGE ~NORTH KOREA FIRE SPARKS OUTRAGE ~SYRIA MASSACRE OUTRAGE ~THE SUN’S NAKED HARRY PHOTO DECISION DRAWS OUTRAGE ~OUTRAGE…

Originally posted on Unwrapping The World:
Yesterday I went out to explore Texas. Well Texas was too big, so I thought I would explore Houston, or maybe the bit down by the Gulf Coast. Then I downsized a lil more and headed for the Moon. A few hours later I was touching it. Well I…

The Walls of Dubrovnik

The walls of Dubrovnik, once impregnable, are now penetrated daily by thousands of invaders from around the planet. They come armed, not with their guns but with their Gucci. Not with their cannon but with their cameras. Plundering the city for pleasure and secretly stealing a billion digital images.

Time, memory and a sense of the present

Time moves on and on, and the past sinks deeper into our murky pool of memories. We simply can’t encapsulate a moment or an experience so fully that it can be retrieved and relived with any of the colour or depth of the original. Memory is thin and fragile; lacking in colour and detail, devoid…

An examination of Montenegro

Today was the hottest day of the year. 36 degrees. The day we decided to check out Montenegro. It was quite a test for all of us. I knew nothing about this little country. I certainly never expected it to be some sort of super-heated tourist town. But apparently it is. The south coast is…

A Serbian Beer in Bosnia

Perhaps more than any other of the former Yugoslavian countries, Bosnia is remembered as a battle ground. As the Croatians and the Serbians wrestled for control in the early 1990s, over 100,000 people were killed, thousands of women were raped and nearly 2 million people were “displaced”. And there was the so-called “ethnic cleansing” of…

A Day at the Games – London 2012

We had organised our own triathlon down to London, clutching our £35 hockey tickets. We paced the drive, the walk and the tube stages perfectly, with smooth changeovers. The threatened 60 minute queue through security into the Olympic Park took a world record 3 minutes (including a frisk, but no urine samples).