My all time favorite automobile has to be a grey Morris Oxford Series II with red leather seats. It was our first family car which our dad turned up with one evening after work shortly before we moved house in the summer of 1964.

This next travel tale has a sporting flavour. A fight on a station platform at Greenwich between rival football supporters recalls George Orwell’s connection between sport and war. What can this fight tell us about territory, identity and the sense of belonging in these war-driven times?

People-watching requires no specific qualifications, just a little time and the curiosity to do something other than scrolling through irrelevant notifications on your phone. This means that, instead of looking down, you look up. What may turn up in our immediate environment has not been chosen by an algorithm. At least, not yet. This next piece in this scrapbook of travel tales is about a people-watching experience et Gatwick Airport.

This could be the start of a scrapbook made of moments in transit. When I return to a place I’ve not been for some time, a narrative gets triggered by an inner voice. Sometimes it is simply a string of words spun out of the sights, sounds, smells, textures hiding unseen around me. I write down these scraps as best I can. Some get reshaped and these can be shared.

I’m through Customs and Passports and on my way to my final destination. I walk out of the lift and realize I’ve left my suitcase behind. I turn round to get it but the lift doors have already closed and the lift has gone. I freeze as the emptiness sets in. The lift has gone, my bag in it. I’m bagless and liftless. Where has it gone I wonder? Where have they both gone?

Today is William Shakespeare’s 460th birthday! How has he survived? How has translation helped?

How translation helps Do you live in one language? Or more than one? I live perpetually in English and French, with a little Spanish in there too. I’d like to share an epiphany moment from last November when I saw a play by that most English of English authors, William Shakespeare, performed in French. It […]

A Life In Stolen Moments Ken Kenny, our Dad, was many things in his lifetime, and among them was Marine Radio Officer in the Merchant Navy. He qualified and first went to sea in 1950 and sailed for about 10 years, coming ashore for good in his late twenties. He could always be coaxed into […]

John Trudell John Trudell was an early member of and spokesman for the Native American rights movement and helped to promote a spoken word style that honors Native American oral traditions. POETRY FOUNDATION In a previous post, I mentioned Rébecca Kleinberger‘s work on the different voices we all have. She says that the voice with which we […]

Learning how to begin a story When we start a story, we send out a signal to indicate our presence, get people’s attention, and invite them to connect to something different which is about to start. Once upon a time – or its equivalent – is a widely accepted signal for starting a story. But a […]