Vogel’s Toast
Although I was born in Scotland, my memories begin in New Zealand. Looking back at my childhood, it’s akin to a Supercut of a coming of age movie: wharf-jumping, peering into dormant volcanoes, swimming with seals around the islands, mum picking me up early from school because there was a tornado
Where Are You From?
Not London. Cities with other litanies: Snow Hill, Nechells, Harbourne, Lozells. The late bus from Birmingham, cupped by the fierce hand of the Black Country, and house-proud Solihull, stealing looks, stuck out on its own down the Chiltern line, to Marylebone. Cities with other rivers, other bridges
Somewhere in Düsseltal
The young woman pays Frau Manuela Grobbel the 200€ deposit. Well, she follows Frau Grobbel through the house with the money scrunched in her hands like a Monopoly player about to pass GO. Her name is Ebba. After paying the deposit, she receives a ring with two scratched silver keys. One is for the
China’s Third Way
Shenzhen, the fourth largest city on the Chinese mainland, and one of the largest cities in the world, is contemporary China at its most bizarre and contradictory. Straddling the border with Hong Kong, and part of the broader geographic and economic region known as the Pearl River Delta, Shenzhen is
Letter from the Marquesas
We board a tiny plane to Hiva Oa at dawn. An old fisherman sits next to me on the flight. He speaks in rapid, broken French whilst brandishing a photograph of his prize catch. Out of the window, I watch the land heave up in peaks then sink into valleys, falling in cliffs and buttresses. […]
Inbetween Places; The Trouble of Transport in Travel
Ankara Bar crouches in a pothole between the alleys of Penang. The tattered sign above the door is barely visible through the limp streetlights, and the green water drooling out of the drains creeps up your feet the longer you squint to read it. The name of the shop can be a bit misleading. The [&he
Visible and Invisible History in Budapest
A muscular arm, outstretched; a clenched fist trailing a ragged flag into an arc over head and shoulders. A friend’s comment that the statue is not “artful” (whatever that means) is disputed by an onlooker, possibly one of the ‘communist nostalgia tourists’. My guidebook comments: “It is
All The Words In The World
Since it is user-generated, forvo.com doesn’t really feature all the words in the world, which makes its catchphrase something like Activia claiming to “Feed your Inner Smile”.
