We’re midway into my ten ways to break the ice with strangers when you’re travelling – and now it’s time to play the fool.
Posts Tagged ‘Travel’
Breaking The Ice With Strangers: Hook
The road is a lonely place.
Everyone’s a stranger. You long to connect with someone, anyone, but the odds are stacked against you. You’re in too much of a hurry to engage in social bonding rituals like feasting and hanging out. There’s the natural coolness in the air. And hey, you’re not your normal self right [...]
How To Make Athens Punch You In The Stomach
It’s easy.
Simply climb that hill on the right.
How To See Airports (And Other Bad Places)
If you were traversing Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow last August, you may have seen a writerly-looking chap sat tapping on a computer, his words being displayed on a large plasma screen over his head. This was the temporary Writer In Residence, Alain de Botton, and he was writing a book about what airports really [...]
The Human Scale Of Cold: How We Freeze (And How We Thaw)
What happens when you get too cold?
When we say “cold”, we usually mean one of two things. The first is the foot-stamping, hand-rubbing, nose-blowing kind that millions of us Brits are experiencing right now as we trudge through the slush, or curse when the snow billows in our opened car doors.
And then there’s the other [...]
Hornsea, Askance
Hi. I’m a 38 year old man, living at home with his mum.
(Until she’s recovered from her recent surgery. Probably returning to York this time next week).
Walking through town last night, I squinted until everything was blurry – until it was 1998 again, the last time I lived here. I listened to someone explaining the [...]
But A Wisp of the Dales
In 2007, I went walking with 2 good friends in the Yorkshire Dales around Ingleborough.
The air was heavy with rain that never quite broke, shot through with sunshine that never really came out to play, and just the right temperature to keep you walking at a mile-devouring trot.
We walked up hill and down valley, up [...]
Waiting To Be Replaced
Today might be the day I get replaced.
There’s That Voice Again
Stories, I said.
Here’s mine.
Since returning from Orkney I’ve been freelancing over at WebUrbanist and its sister-site WebEcoist, and my final post for them will be going up on November 24th.
And after that?
In the immediate short-term, I’ll be looking after my mum when she comes out of hospital after some surgery (all’s gone well, but I’ll [...]
Soft and Prickly: Our Fickle Love Of The Countryside
When it comes to the British countryside, we don’t know which way to turn.
In the 17th Century it was something we feared – a chaotic, violent place where Nature, red in tooth & claw, vied for a taste of your blood with bandits, highwaymen, smugglers, murderers and the clinically befuddled. Mention the countryside to Thomas [...]
