I was in the middle of Amsterdam for one night only. I had to get out and run. So at 6.30am I was stepping out of the hotel into the icy morning air. It felt more like the middle of the night. The cold water of the IJ lay black and and foreboding in front…
Category: Being Human
The Auckland Taxi Mystery
I was checking out of the last hotel on the final day of a week dashing around some islands in the Southern Hemisphere. Three of them to be precise. Australia, South NZ and now North NZ. My colleagues had left at midday, leaving me with a fee afternoon to walk around Auckland. I’d been up…
To fly, perchance to sleep
Counting time between proper sleeps – it was 48 hours. From waking up in my own bed in England (8am Saturday morning) to falling asleep in a hotel room in Melbourne (10pm Monday evening). We can argue about the definition of a day. The number of hours between these two times is theoretically 62 hours.…
Half a world away
The most confusing thing about international travel is working out what time it is. Even the one hour difference can trip you up – you can easily find yourself arriving somewhere an hour early or an hour late. On this trip, the difference will be variously 4, 8, 11 and 13 hours. I’ve decided to…
Swimming in another fish tank
Living in another person’s house is a bit like wearing someone else’s clothes. It’s an interesting journey of discovery – but after a while you just want your own comfortable jumper back. We have just enjoyed our first week of “airbnb”, living in someone else’s world in Vienna. We arrived at street level after a quick…
The Ups and (ouch) Downs of Life
What goes up, must come down. And I came down with quite a bump. An extremely painful bump. Some days we just feel better than others. This afternoon I was happy, and not for any particular reason. My wife and I had enjoyed a very nice weekend, including a fabulous time at the company ball,…
The Results Recount
The results of the biopsy were inconclusive. Of the 12 samples taken, two had a shade of prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia and one had a touch of atypical small acinar proliferation.. The consultant told me this, as if I should know what this meant. Or rather that I shouldn’t – because this would have made me as clever…
The Results are In
All over bar the shouting The results are in. I just don’t know what they are yet. It’s been really nice that people have wished me good luck, or reassured me about the odds of a good outcome. But it makes no difference to the answer. Nothing can change that. It is – as…
Peace amongst the Parasol Shadows
We were enjoying our annual winter break in the warmth of Tenerife. On Wednesday, we decided to relax by the pool later in the day, rather than straight after breakfast, which had been our habit. We surveyed the options for the best place to lie. With the sun lower in the sky and further round…
A Stroke of Insight – Shock, Calm, Caring and Mortality
My wife’s stroke was totally unexpected. By any reasonable measure she was right at the bottom of the risk ladder. But whilst the masses obediently follow statistics, life deals each one of us our own personal hand of cards with no apparent rhyme or reason. If we are lucky, we receive a flush of serendipitous…
Unwrapping The World 