The past weeks (and actually, months) have raced by like the pages of a flipbook. Taking my freelance status to heart, it means I’ve had my fingers in a variety of different pies, and have been able to explore a little of the Balkans – a part of Europe missing… Continue reading
The cotton tree (nothing to do with cotton I don’t think but it is at least a tree) seems to like the sort of sandy ground that exists between Sierra Leone’s beaches and its loamy earth and on its busy city centre roundabouts. The cotton tree in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s… Continue reading
Leaving a place I’ve come to know and call home always fills me with feelings of anxiety. Yet, in leaving my rented flat in Cambridge after three years I am doing precisely that, and leaving behind another small group of good friends. Standing on the gravel outside the flat’s patio… Continue reading
I turn from Oxford Street onto a narrowing side road back to the heart of the city. Shoppers pass me in the opposite direction, mostly empty handed, fists clenched inside coat pockets against the frozen December air. Travelling across the long northern European winter’s night gives me only the slightest… Continue reading
The idea of travelling across Europe by rail for a pre-arranged fixed price is a great one; one that InterRail (Eurail for non-European residents) is perceived to offer. But the one-stop European rail pass doesn’t stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. The InterRail pass is the bulwark of… Continue reading
Something needed to be done. 50 years ago Britain’s publicly financed rail network lost £104 million. If that doesn’t sound too awful then consider that it today’s money it accounts for £1.9 billion; 36% of the Department of Transport’s current annual budget. Income had not covered costs for almost a… Continue reading
