My friend Becky is an American citizen from the Pacific North Western city of Seattle. She is not currently, and has never been, on the FBI’s most wanted list or indeed in any trouble with the authorities whatsoever. She’s your average honest hard working American girl. However, to the UK Border Agency Becky Lewis is a criminal who must be deported!

Becky has been traveling across the UK over the summer, enjoying a little time out of her ordinary day-to-day life with money she had been saving for just such an adventure. Along the way she’s been couch surfing and [...] Continue Reading…

Feeling the need to escape the impending gloomy winter that was about to descend upon the UK, I decided to abscond to Rovinj, on Croatia’s picturesque Istrian peninsula, to steal the remnants of an Adriatic summer like a pirate hoarding treasure from a ship stranded on rocks.

Rovinj is a charming old fishing harbor on the Adriatic Sea with enchanting narrow cobbled streets that weave there way through ancient mediterranean colored buildings. Popular with tourists the winding streets are peppered with small shops, hidden away restaurants, and galleries where local painters produce and sell their art. It’s an unhurried place, [...] Continue Reading…

President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently the Nobel Committee awarded the US President the honor because of “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.” Not that it really matters, but surely it’s a little premature to be giving President Obama a Nobel Peace Prize?

If you ask me I think that there is another story behind this decision. I think perhaps the judges all got together and had a wild night of strippers and booze then through the heavy haze of a hangover they just came up with the first [...] Continue Reading…

Tell me, is this a male thing or am I just a heartless bastard when I confess that I find babies a little boring?

A friend of mine once told me that he wasn’t all that excited about his newborn daughter because she wasn’t yet fully able to interact with him on any truly meaningful level. It was an admission which he later denied, but one which I totally related to.

Make no mistake, it’s not that I dislike babies. Far from it! In fact I am a big fan of the process by which babies are made, and if practice [...] Continue Reading…

A number of people have been asking me about my little nephew, Jacob, who has been fighting cancer. So by way of an update to everyone who has been praying for Jake and sending good wishes out into the universe for him, you’ll be pleased to know he’s doing great and is currently enjoying making new friends at school.

Having completed his chemo and radiotherapy earlier this summer Jake has been doing very well and enjoying lots of fun times at the families new holiday home in Norfolk. He gets especially excited about a nearby dinosaur park.

The excellent doctors and [...] Continue Reading…

Following the post I made last week about the free Coldplay music giveaway, I ended up going to see them in concert in Manchester with my Canadian couchsurfing guest Sarah. It was a spontaneous decision, but that’s where the good stuff in life is found.

At the end of a welcome week of sunny weather it felt good to get out in the open for an evening of live music in the company of a few thousand people. Unfortunately though, the crowd at Old Trafford Cricket ground were a little more laid back than I had expected. There was no [...] Continue Reading…