There’s a lot of ways to travel these days.
I just can’t keep up with all the different types of tourism and all the neologisms people have invented to describe things that are amply covered by existing words. (Take the arrival of “gocation”, the opposite of “staycation”. That one hurt).
However, I keep my ear to the ground.
Check these out. Next big thing, ‘kay?Read More
I’m rubbish at learning languages. So for a language method to work, it has to be truly idiot-proof.
Here are the best two ways I’ve found of learning a new language – one obvious and therefore my idea, and the other so cunning I’d never have thought of it. (Thanks, Ian).
Both of them will ruin your home life and push you to the fringes of polite society.Read More
The wind gusts suddenly, sending snow whirling past me and down the gaping, eye-sucking maw of the ski-slope at my back.
Everyone else laughs. I think I screamed.Read More
Here are some interesting things about the word “denial”, regarding travel.
1. Denial is not a river in Egypt. (Ask this chap, if you don’t believe me). It’s spelled differently. This is why puns are all contemptible: they’re all about perverting our language to fit humour. Well, not in this blog.Read More
Down with breakfast bars. Up with Jannis!
Read More
*door opens*
Hi. You’re the editor? You deal with signing up bold new writers? Yeah, my name’s Mike, I’ve come to discuss some of my ideas with you.
Into the last part of Breaking The Ice we go – and on the menu we have a rich dessert of prejudice, xenophobia, narcissism and self-importance.
(Yum).
The bend widens out, and before me lies a toy train platform, built lifesized.
I crunch up, moving from a path of gravel ballast onto sloping wooden planking. Before and behind me, the rails curve lazily away through the narrow valley, high escarpments on either side pressing inwards and making a sweaty day even closer. Barring the steel lines set ablaze by the sunshine it’s a natural-looking landscape – into which Newton Dale Halt has been dropped like a shoddy special effect.
On either end of the wooden stop there are inward-facing signs, both unreadable as I approached along the trackside path. Upon making the top of the platform, I discover they say “Danger: Do Not Walk Along The Trackside Path”. Great. Cursing my knack for finding turnings where none exist, I unshoulder my rucksack and sit down on the moss-greased planking.
Silence falls, roaring in my ears as I strain to hear the approach of a train returned from the dead.