Do You Believe in Tears?
He bounces. There’s no other way to describe it. He sits down next to me, but the chair doesn’t allow for bouncing and before long he’s jumped to his feet again. While we talk he …
Category: Country
Cucumbers
‘Do you want some cucumbers?’ Stas and I have been in the restaurant half an hour when Saul arrives, looking slightly flustered. ‘Elvira got back just as I was about to leave,’ he says. He …
A Mystery
There were dragons and volcanoes and castles; there was tea and watermelon and cake; and there were six of us contemplating the square tiles on the table. We were playing Carcassonne, an extended version. Bit …
One Year Later
I want to tell you about the light. It is nearly five o’clock in the morning when we emerge, blinking, into the grey pre-dawn of St Petersburg. We push through the crowds milling outside the …
An Ode to June
June. My final month in Innsbruck. I would like to invite you on a jaunt through June. On the first Sunday of this fine, summer’s month, after a night spent in a mountain hut, I …
Two Hundred Days
I saw the sea again, today. I heard the roar of the waves, tasted the salt on my tongue, felt the wind in my hair. It had been over two hundred days. The crash of …
Innsbruck
What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees, Up, up it goes, And yet never grows? Gollum in ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R.Tolkien They are still there. They are always there. Only when the …
Where words and colour were lacking
There were not enough words to describe Russia. They flowed effortlessly onto the page, they overflowed: first onto paper, every day, something of a stream of consciousness; and then onto the screen, this time with …
Only a game
The child looks up at me, wide-eyed. Never before have I considered myself to be quite so terrifying, but now I find I have to do my best to counter-act this rather unwelcome character trait: …
What the doctor ordered
I could manage one child. Three was a little tiring, as they spent most of their time falling over. But twelve? How am I supposed to keep control of twelve children on skis? As it …