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Last Leg (16)
I am sitting down by the river – our Gandaki dragon friend which is is not as violent as we saw it yesterday but it still snorts and roars and I stay clear of its bank. Everyone else is still in bed....
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Pokhara Unwind (17)
I wake at ten minutes to five and get up to check the weather. It’s not raining but the clouds are hanging around the hills. There is a 50/50 chance that we will see the snow covered peaks surrounding...
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Amen and Amen (18)
And so it ends. I have clamped the emotion down and I distract myself with work emails and book launch details and diary commitments that I need to be thinking about over the next month or more. But...
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Some Things I Probably Should not have Done – But am Glad I Did
(not an exhaustive list by any measure) Spoken to those two Russian women on that bridge in Paris. Who were they really and who did they actually work for? But, my goodness, they were gorgeous. Move...
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A Book, That Book, Any old Book
It’s finally more than a cover concept and more than a pile of draft manuscripts that stand more than 30cm high. What do I think of that? I suspect I might be like a father who is indifferent to the...
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16 Hours on an Indian Track
Dahl baht and rice looks pretty much the same at either end of the digestive tract. It’s delivered on a silver tray in some sort of order. Delivery at the other end is another matter altogether. At...
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Very hungry, very poor, very hungry baby (Yeah right!)
Every day in another culture offers the frisson of adventure, even if it is merely based on the fact that I am out of my own. Every day there are such a host of peculiar and unusual things going on the...
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No So Tough Mudder
There is a whole lot of nonsense out there about Tough Mudder. Is it tough? Really tough? No. Not really. 20km, or 19km or whatever the actual distance is, is 19km or 20km. If you are ready for it you...
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Adelaide Advertiser Review of Flowers of Baghdad
It’s short, but in praise… Malik is an Iraqi shirt salesman determined to believe in his country despite the violence tearing it apart. Aadil is a former army offi cer driven by poverty and anger to...
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Daily Telegraph Interview – Flowers of Baghdad
Daily Telegraph ‘Flowers of Baghdad’ interview appeared 20 September 2012. Follow the White Rabbit below (!) to get the whole article.
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In the Footsteps of Edmund Hillary
There has to be a better title than that but that pretty much sums it up. Sir Ed allegedly got the climbing bug when he climbed up to the Mueller Hut located in the Mount Cook National Park – or...
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A Conversation with Joanna
Well here I am again. No, don’t get up, two visits in less than two years is not that unusual. Okay, I did commit to coming back earlier though, so forgive me my tardiness. I ran down here this...
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Up from Ball Hut
Well if you have to continue in Hillary’s steps (I use the word ‘continue’ with considerable license – I was in Nepal earlier in the year, Ed’s second home) then this is the place to come. He...
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Mind Over Matter Over Ice
I slept well though under the shadow of a migraine. Altitude and hard work and my dreams are vivid and ridiculous and I turn through the night to get away from them. We cracked a window to ensure we...
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You Peak Bagger You
I have been freaked out!! All day. Along knife edges. Up ice and rock. More knife edges. One preceded by “if you have to choose, fall right not left. If you fall right you are less likely to die.” He...
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Taking a Step when You Shouldn’t
Fear is in the pit of my gut fed by tidbits of “What ifs” that are impossible to repel. What if I lose my footing? My balance? What if the snow slope gives way (the avalanches on Middle Peak crack and...
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What Goes Up Must Come Down – Until Next Time
The previous evening the snow started in just before six thirty, and just as three others hove into view in the saddle below the hut. They struggle through the knee deep snow and we symapthise and put...
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Back to France
I am in Gare L’Est, a significant point in the novel I started writing ten years ago, Ironically it’s where I am to catch my train up to Verdun and was not a place I was planning on visiting. But here...
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Fred of Verdun
It only takes ten minutes or so and we are in open country. I am mildly surprised. Though how open is hard to say since it is still dark . But we are running fast through cuttings and against the first...
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Haudainville
‘Haudainville?!’ exclaimed Fred of Verdun. ‘There’s nothing there.’ ‘Well, I have a farmer set out from there in a story I have written.’ ‘Really?’ He laughs. ‘I happen to know some farmers in...
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