There was a time, way back in the old days, when mobile phones were just phones that could sometimes make phone calls if you were standing in the right place at the right time and in the right position. These days though, the humble mobile phone is now the master of many things, as is proved by this amazing and quite beautiful short film that was shot entirely on a smartphone.

The film is called ‘Splitscreen : A love story.’ It was made by British director JW Griffiths and director of photography Christopher Moon, in response to a competition by [...] Continue Reading…

I’ve driven more than one thousand three hundred miles (nearly 2,100 kilometres) from Melbourne along the coast next to the Tasman Sea and the South Pacific. In British terms thats the same amount of distance from London to St Petersburg in Russia! I’m not entirely sure where ‘there’ is, but by my calculations that puts me a little short of being half way there, though something tells me that’s entirely unimportant.

Australia is a big country. I already knew that, but driving it really puts the distances into perspective. Reviewing my progress on a map of Australia is a little [...] Continue Reading…

Many a time I have seen someone driving a VW kombi (microbus/camper van) and thought to myself, ‘It would be cool to have one of those.’ I would day-dream about the chance to take off whenever the mood took me, to just head out onto the open road and stop for the night at an unplanned and possibly unknown location. I would imagine driving a camper van across the United States, around Europe, or along the Australian coast. As day-dreams go, it was a good one.

That was the dream, and here I am now with a map of Australia [...] Continue Reading…

It’s winter in Melbourne. The days are brief and sunshine is in short supply. If wealth were measured in street light hours this city would now be positively opulent. I knew it could get cold here, but I foolishly thought that Australia’s cold would be mild by British standards. I was wrong. June in Melbourne feels like November in Liverpool. So while it is not my only motivation, I will confess that my envy of the weather on the other side of the world has spurred me leave Melbourne to seek out the Australia I day-dreamed about on cold [...] Continue Reading…

If you’ve read my blog for any period of time you’ve probably noticed spelling and grammar errors here and there. My spell checker usually catches the obvious misspellings, but it’s not so great at spotting when I’ve used an incorrect homophone or made a grammatical error. In these situations most people ignore the error, feeling that it might be rude to point it out. Well, I wanted to tell you that I don’t consider it rude, in fact I consider it helpful. So, if you see an error please feel free to correct me. Read on and I tell [...] Continue Reading…

There’s something amazing about a sunny autumn day. I think it’s the perfect mixture of light and colors with a crisp air that you don’t get at any other time of year.

In truth, I’m never happy to see the arrival of autumn. It heralds the end of summer, and serves only as a fanfare for the imminent arrival of another long winter in which I’ll only be wishing for the spring.

I’m a warm weather person. A sun worshipping Englishman with carefully chosen sunglasses and an appetite for blue sky days rarely satisfied by the mean British summers that [...] Continue Reading…