11th May 2016 Vancouver, Canada
It defies logic. Every sensible instinct tells me it should be impossible. At almost 73 metres it’s longer than an ice hockey rink, it’s four times the height of my house (and I don’t live in a bungalow) and it carries over 500 passengers (plus luggage). Staring at it through the window of Vancouver International […]
22nd April 2016 Vancouver, Canada
April 23rd is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Few of us would dispute that he was a great playwright, few except perhaps Grade 8 students all over the world being forced to study symbolism in Macbeth or how to write iambic pentameter. But why is it Shakespeare we still celebrate? Why him and not […]
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23rd November 2015 Vancouver, Canada
You may remember the 1970s and ‘80s like they were yesterday. Or perhaps they seem like ancient history, an era long before you were born. It was a time of Punk and New Romantics, the Marlboro man and heavy glass ash trays, big hair and bad cars (or bad hair and big cars). Vehicles drank […]
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14th October 2015 Vancouver, Canada
“So what do you want to talk about?” My therapist looks at me over his half-moon glasses with a practiced benign smile, and strokes his greying beard.
Opposite him, on a couch large enough for my extended family, I tally the pros and cons of continuing. Why not? It’s my time after all. “LNG.”
1st October 2015 Vancouver, Canada
It is impossible to calculate wisdom. You can count the number of people in a room, add up the amount of peer reviewed publications, or years spent living among different cultures, even an average IQ. If you were minded, you could use these metrics to get an idea of whether you were surrounded by knowledge.
17th September 2015 Vancouver, Canada
It’s been 75 years since The Battle of Britain. Given that my daughter thinks the 1990s were the ‘olden days’, this is quite some time. Yet still we remember it, and rightly so. Not only because it’s important to honour those who sacrificed themselves for us, but because of the enduring legacy the Battle has […]
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19th March 2014 Vancouver, Canada
A few weeks ago I found myself in a bar in Houston, Texas. Old Colt 45 pistols for door handles, animal skulls for wall hangings, a single guitarist playing a mournful country song – I’d walked into a cliché movie set (awesome)…
19th December 2013 Vancouver, Canada
There are few events as exciting as the countdown to a rocket launch; and few contexts in which the words, “all systems normal” are as welcome…
28th August 2013 Vancouver, Canada
Never write about Shakespeare. It’s like inviting friends to watch you skate when the Sedins are on the ice. In fact, given the very existence of Hamlet and King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night – to write or not to write, at all, about anything, should be the question. . .
30th May 2013 Vancouver, Canada
Over the past few weeks I have been telling a lot of people that Minister Alistair Burt, from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, is visiting Vancouver. He’s responsible for the UK’s relationship with Canada and much besides. This was big news for me, but it seemed to elicit one of three responses…