About two years ago I started collecting souvenir pens. In particular, the ones that feature a local scene and something appropriate that floats by when you turn it up or down. Not every tourist attraction has them. I’m yet to find one featuring the mudbrick mosques of Djenne or the Buddhist temple at Borobudur. But [...]

The Aussies were cruelly knocked out of the World Cup yesterday by a dubious last-second penalty. To be fair to the Italians, they’d been playing for most of the second half one man down and we couldn’t put them away. Well done to the Azzuri. I was happy that the Socceroos had put up a [...]

Our inflatable kangaroo got a little over-excited during Australia’s 2-2 draw with Croatia last night and developed a puncture. She’s having a little bit of a lie-in and conserving her energy for the big match against the Azzuri on Monday. I know how she feels. Two blatant penalties missed. The ref forgetting to send a [...]

Despite predictions by India’s leading astrologers to the contrary, the Aussies lost to the Brazilians at the World Cup yesterday. They defended well, had a couple of chances they didn’t take and generally gave a good account of themselves. As you can see from the picture, our inflatable kangaroo was inconsolable. According to an article [...]

I just came across an entry about me and my books on Tony Wheeler’s blog. Tony Wheeler is the founder of the Lonely Planet empire and said that Swahili for the Broken-Hearted was ‘nicely open-minded.’ Not sure what he means exactly, but it’s got to be better than ‘not very nicely closed-minded.’

Yesterday afternoon, in the oven that is the Fritz Walter Stadion in Kaiserslautern, Australia won it’s first ever World Cup Final match. They beat Japan 3-1. You wait for 32 years for a goal and then three come along in 8 minutes. I couldn’t be happier. I watched the game at the Walkabout in Covent [...]

Since Daisy was born I’ve been watching a lot of children’s television. Most of it is pretty dire. The makers of the Teletubbies should go and sit on the naughty step, I reckon. But through sheer repetition there are a few that I have actually come to like. The Koala Brothers. Miffy – particularly the [...]

People reading my rants about the TSA may have got the impression that I had a horrible time in the US. They’d be wrong. It was one of the best trips I’ve had in a long while. I even enjoyed my run-ins with the protectors of America’s flight paths. It’s no fun when everything goes [...]

I arrived back at Heathrow to find what I always find – a huge queue for immigration snaking its way around the entire arrival hall. The plane before mine had just arrived from Romania and the immigration officials were paying particular attention to the addresses that the new arrivals had put on their forms. By [...]

You might remember I had a bit of a run in with the Transportation Security Administration. I’m sure they do. If you go to Google and type ‘The TSA broke into my bag’ my blog entry is the first thing to show up. Anyways, on the flight back to New York from Denver they broke [...]