My mate Doug runs a web site called Signspotting. It’s a repository for all those weird signs you see when you’re travelling the world. The unintentionally funny, even obscene, warnings and instructions that come about when you attempt to use a language that is not your own. Being an enterprising American, Doug has spun the [...]

As far as jobs I go, I think I’ve got a pretty cool one. I get to travel for months on end, write about my experiences and then gad about the place telling people stories about my adventures. But this morning I got a bit of a wake up call. There are a lot of [...]

Each month I get a handful of emails from people asking for help with a charitable endeavour they’re undertaking. You know the drill – the said person is about to set off on some crazy wild-eyed adventure to raise money for a worthy cause. No consideration is shown for for my emotional well-being, of course. [...]

A couple of weeks ago Nokia sent one of their 3G Booklets to try out. The Booklet is Nokia’s first foray into personal computing – a netbook with a 3G sim card slot. I was a little surprised when they contacted me. But they said they came across my website and wanted me to put [...]

I went to the Teenage Fanclub gig at the Shepherds Bush Empire last night. If you drove past the the square last night you wouldn’t have spotted me. I was just one of a couple of hundred guys there with a receding hairline wearing a checked shirt, jeans and converse trainers. I very nearly didn’t [...]

I’ve already had one trip canned this year thanks to Eyjafjallajokull, a.k.a. that volcano in Iceland. A little two-week jaunt through Iraqi Kurdistan that didn’t get off the ground because I couldn’t get off the ground either. Easyjet refunded the cost of my flight to Istanbul. But I had to wear the cost of the [...]

My friend Marco’s dad passed away yesterday. Marco’s dad was Tom Bass, the famous Australian sculptor. One of his most best known works is the P&O wall fountain on Hunter Street. Oz Magazine published a photo of it being used as a urinal in 1964 with a caption that read ‘A trio of Sydney natives [...]

As part of my big trip around the UK I’ve been keeping an eye on who is carrying the torch, culturally speaking, for the land of my birth. Germain Greer pops up occasionally in The Guardian to give her two-bob on a country she left forty years ago. Clive James emerges, blinking in the light, [...]

Who says British immigration officers don’t have a sense of humour? The lady who stamped me back into the country on Thursday was delighted to see I had one of the new Aussie passports with a different picture on each page. She went straight to page twelve and plonked my entrance stamp right in the [...]

The random media appearances continue. After my triumphant appearance in the Pontefract & Castleford Express, I’m running the risk of overexposure by being interviewed in the latest issue of TNT and popping up fleetingly in the Somerset episode of new Hairy Biker’s TV series – Food Tour of Britain. In TNT magazine I discuss the [...]