All posts in category: Travel/Nature

Be still my beating heart. No, I’m not lovestruck. I am about to get on a plane

August 29, 2021
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Travel/Nature
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Why...

Am I so excited to get on a plane again?

After a catalogue of medical oopsy-daisies and the dreaded Covid lurgy-lockdown, my wife and I board the big silver bird soon. For me, the first time in 20 months. Love Malta as I do, you can carpet it in an afternoon. I have increasingly felt like Dustin Hoffman or Steve McQueen in Papillon, waiting to jump off a cliff with a net bag full of coconut shells to drift away to somewhere new.

I really don’t know what to expect at the departing or arriving airports. It appears things are totally random. When my wife flew to the USA earlier this month the words Covid or vaccination were never uttered in Washington DC, yet as she flew out of Frankfurt she was made to feel she should be hermetically sealed and vacuum packed. We have friends who have been grilled with more questions than a debrief of a defecting spy, while others drifted through without ever producing a vaccine certificate. As usual there is no consistency or joined up writing between what various health ministries decree and what happens on the ground

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If you are at home in summer it’s too damn hot. If on holiday it’s not hot enough

Why...

Do exactly the same events draw different reactions whether at home or on holiday?

It is a given if you live in a country with a hot climate, that summer is a bit of a chore. No one who lives here in Malta would dream of going sunbathing in August, let alone spend all night in an unair-conditioned night club. Yet as soon as we break the island’s shackles and go abroad everything changes. We all lay out like coffee beans slowly going from red to brown under a scorching sun in Marbella or visit a sauna with music that is some Greek nightclub in Mikanos. There we bop the night away as we slowly melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, to scramble back to hotels as dawn is breaking only to be woken an hour later by bin lorries.

Despite paying through the nose we actually put up with a lot more on holiday than we do at home. That explains paying silly money for a plate of pasta at a beach side bistro or a kings ransom for a bottle of champagne in a nightclub; neither of which we would ever pay at home.

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The ultimate amusement park ride or just a giant c#ck?

Why...

This sudden glut of billionaire space cowboys?

Obviously the creation of your own rocket is a pretty serious achievement. The best I could have come up with would have been a 300 foot milk bottle, lit the blue touch paper and stood well back.

However, amazing as it is that three individual billionaires can summon up the resources to compete with NASA, I can’t help asking why? I mean the business plan has got to be pretty poor.

“ Ok so you want to spend umpty billion building a rocket?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“ To offer rides to those not rich enough to build one themselves. Common or garden centimillionaires.”

That’s it. It is the ultimate private Enterprise F#ck You bragging rights over silly $500m yachts or gold plated planes.

Bezos rocket even looks like a willy. Is he really just like any middle aged saddy in a Ferrari to make up for any shortcomings in his manhood.

“Just look at the size of my cock as it thrusts it’s way into outer space”, he is shouting to the world. I hope in the Bezos bedroom it lasts longer than ten minutes soup to nuts.

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Lost & Found… but we keep it anyway

Why...

Is getting back stuff you have lost so difficult? Yes, I understand that my i-Phone and i-Pad should be attached to my wrists with a piece of string, just like a toddler’s gloves. I do have a tendency to lose things… A LOT. However, recently I left my i-Pad on a Turkish Airline flight that had to connect via Ataturk (Istanbul) Airport. I left the i-Pad on the plane that landed in Ataturk from Malta and noticed it missing on the plane to Sofia, my final destination. So far, so stupid. Rang the airline. Hooray they have found it. To confirm it was mine they asked for the access code to turn it on. I gave it to them. “When are you coming to collect it from Lost and Found?” I replied I was not coming back though Ataturk so could I send a courier to collect. “No. Lost and Found is airside (i.e. after customs/immigration control) so you have to collect yourself.” Having a Lost and Found at an airport that you can only physically pick up yourself if travelling is as logical as a chocolate tea-pot. In addition, my insurance company declined to pay out a loss as the item was in fact recovered. Now if I was a cynical chap, I might think this is part of a cunning plan. You lose an item on a plane, you hand over the access code to show it is yours, they know you are unlikely to collect and before you can say Ebay, it’s for sale… but that would be a terrible thing to suggest…….

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As lockdown is over we wondered if we could come visit and have a dip in your pool?

April 18, 2021
Friends Kids/Family/Relations Technology Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do I suspect our home is about to be invaded by numbers that make the Mongol hordes look like a tea party?

Over the next four months my wife and I are bracing ourselves not only for requests to visit from dear and close friends, but everyone I have ever met; from the STD doctor I once spilt coffee over and gave my gentleman’s sausage third degree burns, to a Fulham traffic warden who gave me so many tickets he knew my name. He’d even stop me in the street to tell me he’d just given me another ticket or worse what he called a curbie grip (clamp).

The pent up desire from people in Northern climes to ‘come and unwind’ for a few days now they are released from Covid’s lockdown embrace, could eventually transform me from a gracious host into Basil Fawlty.

As some readers know, the problem is people think because you live by the sea in a warm environment that you are de facto permanently on holiday. No, it’s home! I work from here! It’s like assuming because you choose to live in Des Moines you are as bland as sliced bread... well actually that’s true, bad example... but you know what I mean. No matter where you live, in a Palace in Pacific Palisades to a bivouac in Hackensack. It’s home. Not a holiday.

Some people are shocked when you cannot drive them to see the worlds largest bunion (or whatever your locale has made famous) or that the fridge is getting low on beer.

“Yeah the red burns on my arm are not caused by the sun but permanently working on the bar-b-q”, I add dryly to a enquiry as to my health.

Please note... actually it’s barbe a queue, literally beard to tail when you spit roast a chicken or even a pig on an open fire. So now we not only have to thank the French for their Letters (think about it, it’s a subtle joke) but also allowing Australians to think they can cook.

I digress...

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My new travel agent

March 14, 2021
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Sex Travel/Nature
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Why...

Has my TV and cable remote turned into TripAdvisor?

Having run the gamut of US and UK located shows I have started choosing my televisual feasts on where I fancy visiting or want to return to now that lockdown is giving me island fever here in Malta. I have not set off the rock for over a year and though a lovely place it’s so small you could carpet it in an afternoon.

The Serpent gave me a decent dose of Thailand, Nepal and India. My sister is so ancient she can remember the rumours of a serial killer praying on backpackers in the 1960s in Asia.

Yearning for a bit of ice and snow I watched the thriller Cardinal, set in Algonquin. Not the hotel in New York where Dorothy Parker held court with such gems as “Every morning I brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue” or “beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes to the bone”, but some snow hole north of Toronto where a serial killer was plying his trade.

Next I hopped over to the beaches of Sydney for Deep Waters followed by the anodyne surroundings of Canberra in Secret City, Australia’s own House of Cards.

To add to the feeling of local immersion, these shows have to be binge watched, accompanied by meals and booze from the country of the series. So possum burgers and Bundaberg Rum for Oz, Moose Lager and maple syrup pancakes for Canada and chilly Mo-Mo washed down with Tongba for Nepal. (Look it up). No wonder my diet isn’t working. Maybe I need to watch more shows from Japan or other low fat diet countries.

In fact maybe TV watching can be part of a diet?!

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2021 Summer Holidays... Club 18-30 will be empty. It’s going to be all oldies

March 7, 2021
Friends Kids/Family/Relations Sex Travel/Nature
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Why...

Will all the nightclubs this summer be full of Old Age Pensioners?

Amid all this rushing to get anyone in touching distance of being old injected against Covid, we will have left the younger generation alone.

“They’re not at risk. They can wait.”

Maybe...

I have to assume that this summer no one is going to be able to venture overseas without proof of inoculation. Come forward most people over 55. What about the sex mad twenty somethings, a significant percentage of whom enjoy rumpy-pumpy 24 hours after landing on foreign shores! They are going nowhere. No inoculation, no overseas travel.

An entire generation will sit at home watching their parents and grandparents all dressed up in sombreros and sandals, off to the Continent to drown in Sangria, Mai Tai’s and Ambre Solaire.

On the Costa del Sol a backpacker is going to be as rare as a redneck with a full set off teeth. The whole vibe of this summer in Europe will change.

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It’s a passport photo, not a Henri Cartier Bresson portrait

January 24, 2021
Fasion Health & Beauty Sex Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do we go care so much about our passport photographs? It’s not as if we expect to go on a date with a Custom’s Officer? A dear late friend of mine was a wildly successful manager of Rock and Pop Stars. He got a call one day from a world famous client who was performing at Wembley and due to fly out and perform three days later at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. His passport had expired so my friend went to his London home, picked up the passport and went to Petit France (where passports were renewed in those days) and due to the fame of his client managed to get a new passport. Two days later he got a furious call from his famous client saying he would not be going to Berlin as he hated the photo his agent had selected in the new passport. He refused to use that passport and had it incinerated. Concert was postponed! And no, I am not saying who this was! In our new COVID world you can renew a passport online with an I-phone photo. Let me just say my wife was extremely upset at the photo I took of her recently for her new passport. “Darling, you are an eternal beauty. But it’s flat lighting, a head on shot against a white background, blank expression, hair pulled back... so the odd wrinkle might show.” She was still not happy. “The only person ever to see it will be an overweight Immigration officer with halitosis that could strip paint and a probably unhealthy desire to give you an “internal” search. My recommendation is to look as appealing as roast pangolin served by a waiter with a cough.” That worked.

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Never ask for directions and other essential tourist information...

August 1, 2020
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Sport Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do I know more about where I visit than where I live? If you want to amuse yourself in a city you are visiting ask directions to a made up address. If it's slightly rude… even better. Piddle Lane, Butt Hole Road, Divorce Court or (my favourite) Camel Toe Drive. (These in fact all exist). Nine times out of ten the person you ask will point you with utter certainty in the direction of your fictitious address. Locals never, ever, can be seen to know less than a foreigner. It is a maxim that you are always better informed of the cities you visit than the ones you live in. Most foreigners know far more than I do about London....and I lived there off and on for fifty years. The last time I viewed the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London, TV was black and white and The Beatles wore suits. My most recent visit to the British Museum was with my toddler son......who is now a pilot! However I visit the Louvre every time I am in Paris and the Met every time I'm in New York. I would rather kiss a politician than go to the Opera in London but in Vienna it's a must. If you do want true culture always search out a local museum. There are only so many Botticelli's a man can see in a day but how about the Phallogical (gentleman's sausage) Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland? You can compare notes with the Condom Museum in Bangkok or Sex Museum in Amsterdam? Got the kids? No problem. There are Barbie museums in Paris, Rome and Montreal or a Cup Noodle Museum in Osaka.

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DIY classes and Bear Grylls never taught me how to colour my wife’s roots

June 5, 2020
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Travel/Nature
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Why...

Could I never join Tom Hanks on Castaway? Lockdown has demonstrated that I would never survive a week as Robinson Crusoe. The ‘manly’ ability to be able to fend for myself in the wild is limited to knowing how a tin opener works. Don’t laugh, most kids have no idea what it is. To try and light a fire I might as well rub two Boy Scouts together rather than wood. And the idea of building anything, let alone a hut, that did not come in a flat pack, is farcical. Before Covid-19, many men had this belief that in the survival stakes they had things covered. The reality is without electricity, streaming TV and the Internet mankind is as viable as a condom dispenser in the Vatican. All these clowns who ran around pretending to be GI Joe at the weekend but were Account Managers during the week, would quickly become canapés for a hungry bear in the woods. Just as everyone now is a forensic expert after watching a few seasons of CSI, two episodes of survivor and a season of Gilligan’s Island makes us castaway experts.

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Three weeks in lockdown and I just got plastered

Why...

Are my best efforts to behave thwarted? After weeks of lockdown and too many visits to the fridge, my wife mentioned if I were to go for a swim in the sea I would be in danger of being harpooned by a Japanese whaling ship. “Your trouser top button is social distancing from the the button hole. Get in the gym.” If you are in lockdown with one person, the most important thing is to avoid friction or it will end like Lizzie Borden giving each other whacks with an axe. I duly pulled on some shorts (with an elastic waistband that was stretched tighter than a banjo string) jumped on my cross trainer, lost my balance and promptly fell off. Instead of burning calories I bust my wrist. If there is a God, she has a pretty rough sense of humour. Luckily it’s my left hand. “Don’t think that means you can’t use the treadmill,” my wife warned after driving me back from hospital. So boring. “I’m not a bloody hamster on a wheel,” I replied. Instead I created snaxercise. Open the fridge, bend down, take out ice cream, stand up, take a scoop, bend down, put back ice cream, close the door, stand up. Repeat thirty times.

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The joys of becoming an accidental medical tourist

January 18, 2020
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Technology Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do I react like a spoiled brat when forced to visit a doctor overseas? I recently returned from a trip to Asia that had me visit four different hospitals within three weeks. With more trepidation than an actress knocking on Harvey Weinstein’s hotel door, I expected to be met in Emergency by a wild eyed shaman, a witch doctor ready to behead a chicken, or a surgeon who looked like Boris Karloff. Instead I was treated to some of the best medical service and equipment I have ever seen! One hospital in Chiang Mai was like walking onto the set of 2001 space Odyssey. In fact I half expected HAL’s voice to greet me. As for the actual medication, no ‘eye of newt, toe of frog’ but drugs even I recognised. Though of course there is always a risk of a Chinese knock off, but I guessed odds were remote at the palaces of medicine I visited. What did catch me off guard was dosage. Nothing had any effect until I rang my own Dr. Frankenstein in London. “That is what you’d give a 12 year old,” which is probably the build of most males in the country. I am a beached whale by comparison. Triple the dose and all was dandy! Now I was lucky. I have insurance and was in Thailand where private hospitals put many in certain countries in Europe to shame. Even the food was so good I put on weight. I now understand why Thailand is not only the paedophiles and perverts destination of choice but now over 2m a year for those in search of medical treatment. You never know... the nurse might be a Ladyboy. I now have got my head around this relatively new phenomenon of medical tourism. With equipment this good and prices between 80% and 50% less than in the West, it starts to make sense. In fact you can save so much money that once treatment is finished you can recuperate in a five star hotel and still be in the money. Furthermore your insurance company is going to send you a thank you letter!

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I wish you all a Happy New Year... now here’s something to add a little sparkle!

January 8, 2020
Entertainment/Media/Arts Kids/Family/Relations Travel/Nature Work
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Why...

I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this blog over the past four years. My close friends were relieved as it stopped me sending them endless emails on my observations of the day and gave me a platform to pontificate to a wider audience. My secret passion (well the one I’m prepared to discuss in public) is writing. So in addition to the blog, I rolled up my sleeves, shut the door and wrote a book. My debut thriller FALL OUT launches in May and pre-sales are now available on Amazon both in the UK and USA. It is the first in a franchise of thrillers set in the film industry. My target is 5,000 pre-orders which kicks it into bestseller territory. FALL OUT An LA screenwriter is killed shortly after completing his latest script, FALL OUT - a thriller destined to be a blockbuster but written with a secret double purpose. Echoing events from the past the screenplay is sent to a very specific group of people and will change their lives forever. All are connected to a movie that had abruptly stopped shooting in the jungles of the Philippines years before. FALL OUT exposes the truth about a conspiracy and murder that led to a half-a-billion-dollar fortune for a select few. Follow the story of Producer Marcus Riley, who sets out on an increasingly dangerous quest to get FALL OUT made. From a powerful agent’s office in Hollywood, hidden treasures in Belgravia and a remote chalet in the Swiss Alps to murder at the Cannes Film Festival, Marcus teams up with designer Melinda (Mako) de Turris as they and the other recipients of the screenplay are pursued by an assassin from the past. With clues cleverly concealed in the screenplay, Marcus and Mako unravel a lethal puzzle that for some will bring death, others the truth and ends in a cave with a shocking secret..... If you have enjoyed the blog and fancy something longer than just a paragraph or two now is your chance! Click here for Amazon UK book location Click here for Amazon US book location

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I will get arrested if I ask a stranger to stuff my pudding in her secret little container

December 20, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations Travel/Nature
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Why...

By a remarkable set of coincidences have I managed to get to 63 and never spent Christmas Day in the snow? On the only two times up to age 24 it snowed in the UK on Christmas Day I was out of the country. Every other year was spent there. No snow. My wonderful parents never got the ski-bug, so I actually never skied till I was 42! Once I started making a few bucks, my love of diving had me spend nearly every Christmas somewhere hot. So that was nearly 25 Christmases doused in Ambre Solaire with the odd one spent again with family and friends in snowless England. Now married to my American wife, we live in Malta where Christmas is usually around 20c/75f. Occasionally we spend it with her family in Old Town Alexandria, just outside Washington D.C. I missed a snowbound Washington Christmas, coz the planes from the UK were grounded due to bad weather or a strike or both and again when it snowed in the UK a few years ago we were in Washington enjoying a heat wave. So, I have given up.

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My Eyebrows are Silky Soft and my Hair Smells of Listerine

December 5, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Travel/Nature
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Why...

Hotel room designers must have one thing in common (apart from calling their children Nathanial or Poppy); vision so perfect they could see a flea get a hard on. Even with all the lights on, hotel rooms at night are as dim as a village idiot. It has some very disturbing results. Instead of the bell hop pointing out the bloody obvious like opening a small door and expecting me to be hugely impressed when he says 'fridge' instead of 'hotel cash machine' why can he not explain how the inevitable mishmash of light switches all relate to each other? I am forever getting into bed and hitting some knob that instead of turning the lights out, turns on a hairdryer or activates the TV. Even once I’ve mastered how the actual switches work, the lighting is so bad that my wife insists I bring a flashlight to help with her make-up.

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Welcome aboard…. is enough

Why...

"Welcome aboard flight UR OXN flying from Heathrow to Sydney. My name is Sandra and I will be assisted by Dee in First class, Ben and Jerry in business and some trainees I look down on in economy. We understand you have a choice of other airlines and appreciate your custom ........We will be cruising today at 35, 000 feet at approximately 900 kilometres, or 560 miles or 490 knots per hour. First I need you all to pay attention to the safety demonstration, even those amongst you who have flown before…..” And so it begins. Flight attendants have become nannies in the sky, ready to instruct and scold. They know best. So listen up….and just to make you are awake the speakers screech with feedback. Most of us just want to recover from a cavity search after foolishly packing a pair of nail clippers in our hand luggage and watch a movie. The only thing we may ask the cabin staff (whose name is on their badge) is to turn the heating down.

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Anyone who yells “I know my rights”... invariably does not

Why...

Do people think watching episodes of Law and Order or Judge Judy qualifies them to understand all aspects of the law, when most don’t know their writs from their tits? During my last trip in the aluminium hen coop they call Air Malta, I tilted my chair back a fraction. As some of you know I have had back surgery and sitting bolt upright for three hours is painful. Immediately behind me this beached whale kicked the back of my chair and slapped the top of my head yelling, “I know my rights. Put your chair back in upright position. I have no room.” Rather than get into a huge fight, I simply pulled out a card and gave it to him, whispering, “So, do I”. He shut up. It was not my card, but a lawyer’s card from one of the UK’s top law firms I had recently visited. It read Senior Litigation Partner.

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Don’t talk to me. I’m breathing and I can’t do two things at once

Why...

Is the law about to stop me talking? (Hooray you all cry.) I see there is legislation being pushed to stop people using a hands-free phone whilst driving as it disturbs concentration. The idea that you are incapable of driving a car and having a conversation is absurd. And the idea that a phone call requires more concentration than talking to your passenger is equally daft. Let me tell you, I have to concentrate far more whilst conversing with my passenger, especially if it’s my wife, than chatting on the phone. For a start, I can’t pull a long face, flick her the bird, put her on mute, mutter obscenities under my breath, pick my nose, fart or even ignore her, like I can a voice in the ether. If communication whilst operating a vehicle is so dangerous, how come pilots who are constantly on the radio, don’t veer off to Iceland when on the way to the Costa Brava? Ships heading for Rotterdam don’t end up at Pismo Beach? The real problem of course is that a couple of generations have grown up whose idea of a conversation is texting. People just don’t have conversations, especially in a car. Usually there is a stereo blasting away so loud it makes your ears bleed. So, when a call does come in, an inordinate amount of concentration is needed to hold a conversation. Or worse they text. Result… car crash. Perhaps as part of the driving test, the examiner should have a heated debate on politics or religion. Or the person taking the test should take a call from the Boss.

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Cover up! ...My wife, the sunscreen Nazi

Why...

Does my wife insist I face the summer’s rays, either fully covered up or looking like an animated meringue… a white blob completely covered in cream? As I watch Sky News today from Malta, I see the UK is nudging 40c (104 Fahrenheit). My fellow countrymen are slowly melting whilst watching their new Prime Minister inflict verbal assault and battery on the Leader of the Opposition in his first Prime Minister’s Question Time. I note none of the MP’s gathered are smothered in sun cream despite it being hotter than Beelzibub’s underpants. Clearly their wives have never met mine.

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Assume the position...

July 5, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Life Travel/Nature Work
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Why...

On some occasions do I happily perform physical feats that I know are pointless or make me look like a gormless half-wit? Another day, another business flight... another useless safety demonstration. My favourite part is when instructed, I must… “Assume the brace position” (i.e. bend forward, head on lap, hands locked under knees). The only position I am assuming, is that in a moment or two I will be zipping through the Pearly Gates of St. Peter at 600MPH. Whether seconds before this I perform a handstand or a fiendishly complicated yoga position, will make no difference to the outcome.

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All posts in category: Travel/Nature

Be still my beating heart. No, I’m not lovestruck. I am about to get on a plane

Why...

If you are at home in summer it’s too damn hot. If on holiday it’s not hot enough

Why...

The ultimate amusement park ride or just a giant c#ck?

Why...

Lost & Found… but we keep it anyway

Why...

As lockdown is over we wondered if we could come visit and have a dip in your pool?

Why...

My new travel agent

Why...

2021 Summer Holidays... Club 18-30 will be empty. It’s going to be all oldies

Why...

It’s a passport photo, not a Henri Cartier Bresson portrait

Why...

Never ask for directions and other essential tourist information...

Why...

DIY classes and Bear Grylls never taught me how to colour my wife’s roots

Why...

Three weeks in lockdown and I just got plastered

Why...

The joys of becoming an accidental medical tourist

Why...

I wish you all a Happy New Year... now here’s something to add a little sparkle!

Why...

I will get arrested if I ask a stranger to stuff my pudding in her secret little container

Why...

My Eyebrows are Silky Soft and my Hair Smells of Listerine

Why...

Welcome aboard…. is enough

Why...

Anyone who yells “I know my rights”... invariably does not

Why...

Don’t talk to me. I’m breathing and I can’t do two things at once

Why...

Cover up! ...My wife, the sunscreen Nazi

Why...

Assume the position...

Why...