If at first you don’t succeed..you might be onto something here. For a long while, my ability to attract misadventure and fall flat on my face whenever enough ground presented itself…well, it haunted me. Other people seemed to glide as if well-oiled through the machinations of society. I rattled, clunked and occasionally jammed. In 1995 I went on my first archaeological … Read More
Austria: Gone In 60 Seconds
Here’s a true story about how I nearly didn’t go to Austria a few weeks ago. It was a really close thing. 60 seconds. 5.30am Stumbling. Coffee. Cannot. Think. Things, fanned out on the floor in an order than made perfect sense last night – or more correctly, earlier this morning. Most of everything is already packed, but these are … Read More
Should Airports Be Fun?
I’m sat at Frankfurt airport, on one of those chair-partitioned metal benches that seemed designed to inflict maximum discomfort and etch interesting patterns deep into your backside. A few strides away my laptop is charging at one of the airport’s impressively free charge-points, and I could stand against it to continue to tap out this post…but I have something better … Read More
Austria, Unexpectedly
Expectations are hard things to manage. They mess with your memory, fog up your present and drain your future of novelty. On this trip, I did my best to avoid them.
Mountain Guiding: How To Lose Friends And Terrify People
We’re on the summit of the 29th highest mountain in Austria, and we’re going to need to call for a helicopter.