This is Not a Holiday

Part I - Lagos

Hello from Lagos, Nigeria!

With only a few days left now until I board that succession of silver birds back to the loving arms of my Gerda, our flat, and even my job, I thought I’d better wrap up my little series of blog posts. I must apologise for them fi...

Readers of my last blog, who did not immediately unsubscribe after reading it, will be pleased to hear that things have improved since I wrote it. I am once again sitting on a beautiful, mostly clean, mostly hassle-free beach, this time in Sierra Leone. I’m still not w...

And now let’s go over to Nobby in the box for the halftime report…

I’m now exactly halfway through my long-awaited sabbatical, although thanks to extended interruptions in Patagonia, Antarctica and Uganda I’m far from half way through West Africa. From here on it’s all...

Gibraltar, Winter, 2000

Standing atop the famous rock, while waiting expectantly for one of the wild barbary apes to attack an undisciplined Spanish child, I peer south. The Strait of Gibraltar is the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. It’s only 14 km wide so I can cle...

Well, it actually happened. I went to Antarctica and returned, a changed man. I’ve seen things. Penguins, mostly. And icebergs.

At the end of the last episode I’d managed to secure an offer from another cruise company after the One Ocean Expeditions cancellation fiasco....

Ushuaia, 5th Nov 2019.

It’s taken me two straight days to get from Sydney to the southernmost city in the world, lodged in front of the snow-capped Martial Mountains lining the Beagle Channel, but I’m wondering why I’ve even bothered. Melancholy is upon me. For the last...

FRA vs BEL 10th July

I’ve never been a huge football fan, not since I was eight years old. I wouldn’t even describe myself as a take-it-or-leave it soccer follower. In fact, I actively dislike the game, including the rules, the negative side of fandom and especially the...

My first night in Oman - I'm sitting on a dhow, second in a row of eight tied to a quay. They're bobbing gently, the only noise their fenders squeaking and the trilling of the seabirds. Suddenly, singing bursts from the mosque not 50m away - the dusk muezzin. "Alaa-a-a...

[Short of time? Read the Haiku instead]

Yes, you read that right – a titanium straw. “That’s a bit ridiculous”, you might think at first (I admit that I did), but think again. It’s not so silly. In fact it’s not silly at all. Like carrier bags, plastic straws are a blig...

I'm a TV Star! Okay, so it's the most remote TV station in the world, with probably one of the least number of watchers, but it's a start, okay?

Anyway I thought that, since I was posting video content, I'd throw up this edited version of the interview that took place o...