Where to even begin...
This book was the most perpetually beautiful and heartrendingly moving piece of writing I have ever read. And that barely even begins to cover my feelings on it.
Indonesia - part 3
There’s not much to preface this with other than that this felt like where the real ‘travel’ began. Not to rain on Bali’s parade but it’s suffered from its own success in that it no longer feels like a true adventure destination. It’s been sanitised and watered down and designed to appeal to the westerners that tour there so much so it feels its lost a lot of the charm that had initially attracted them in the first place. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fantastic, but it missed that alien spark that I had come searching for. This final section had more than just the spark.
Indonesia - part 2
Indonesia - part 1
Monthly book review - The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring
STAND BACK, HERE COMES THE INNER POWER NERD.
I know I know, it's an old book, it's been reviewed to death. There's movies made and everyone basically has an opinion of it already. To be honest it isn't even the first time I've read it. I've also read several other books this month but really... Come on... It's The Lord of the Rings! How could I not write about it?
A quiet word - Creative writing exhibition
Exercise is hard?
People are told constantly that exercise is tough, exercise is tricky, exercise is hard and somehow for doing it you are putting yourself through an abnormal strain. Motivation on gym posters is all presented as 'feel the burn', 'embrace the pain' and other irritating catch phrases. The thing is, whilst this is all well and good if you are a masochist, in fact most people don't like pain and therefore you're immediately put into a negative mindset. Adverts on tv show grimacing faces, internet sidebar ads have puffing and panting people looking like they're attempting to squeeze a watermelon out of their most private orifice.
Monthly Book review - Kill your Friends by John Niven
Iceland
Iceland is beyond comprehension. I like to think of myself as being very imaginative. I like to create little worlds in my head, the wackier the better, on a pretty regular basis. The only type of dreaming I do is lucid, I write stories about my dreams and the fanciful places my head takes me to. My imagination even breaks into the real world at times in the form of my habit of greatly over exaggerating even the most mundane stories, though this probably isn't something to brag about.
Stars - for Stephen
A star is an incredible thing. Tiny pinpricks of light which speckle the night sky, humanity has perpetually been fascinated by them. Holes in the firmament, permanent affixations to the celestial sphere, guiding beacons for lost travellers, nuclear power-stations of colossal scale, the twinkle in a lovers eye after a particularly bad pun; history is alive with descriptions of them given by scholars and simpletons alike from all walks of life.
The Beauty of The Flower, or the perceived separation of Science and Creativity
I was listening to a song the other day (thank you Spotify Discover Weekly) called 'Red' by Phoria. It's a nice piece, floating ambient piano coupled to a clapped beat and slightly breathy singer, it's a good song to listen to when you're thinking about other things. Halfway through the song though, blooming from the gentle wailing vocals comes a deep, soothing voice.
"..The beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too.."
Monthly Book Review - Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This was an incredible story. I’d like to make a point of that as every other review I’ve read for Chimamanda’s star-crossed love epic seems to plough right in with the social commentary aspects of the story and though these are of course vital to the book and what gives it such clout when sitting on your bookshelf, none of that would mean a damn if the story wasn’t superb. And my word is it superb not just for me but for one of the widest ranging audiences I think a book could possibly have.
Why Brexit will be a good thing (just not for me)
Pitchforks down, I know I know, how dare I, a left leaning blogger, even imply that Brexit will actually be a positive move. Surely this populist, exclusionist, isolationist decision can only be a colossal catastrophe for both the Nation and the World. Well I am many things but most of all I am an optimist, and here I have found the silver lining, and in doing so I can confirm that this is not a catastrophe at all, rather this is potentially the forward step that the World needs. Notice I said World there, the Nation, unfortunately, is very much not included in this step.
The Economics of Superheroes
Two Years of Rome (Parts One and Two)
I'm pining. Much like a certain not-dead parrot that famously pined for the Fjords, I too am now pining for the soft orange facades and knobbly cobbly streets of La Citta Bella. It's not surprising, you always want what you've had and lost, like an old watch, old school friends or not being an adult. So I've figured that the best way of dealing with this pining is to write down my progression through the couple of years spent in the eternal city, in order to enter a state of sweet nostalgia and suckle at the teat of sentimentality.
A Rambling Observation on the Nature of London
London London London. A hulking grey seething mass of out of time buildings, winding streets and tightly clipped accents. Of fast paced walking and faster conversations muttered into a telephone. For the average young British person London lives in the psyche, it is forever there just in the back of your mind, beckoning you, letting you know that no matter how hard you try, chances are you will end up living there at one point or another, slaving away under it’s great whip comprised of high-speed broadband cables and intern’s tears.
FARMman and the curse of the comfy sofa
I left Rome! I did it, I bloody went and did it. No no, calm your screams, your cries of 'why' and 'woe' and 'who gives a damn'. It was time. Two years in, two wonderful magical years of working, living, loving and getting myself up to a nice rotund 14 and a half stone (92 kg, 203lbs, thank you cheap pizza and wine). I decided it was time to leave Rome's shimmering shores and, like the great Julius Caesar before me, head back for the coast of Britannia.
The Perfect Steak: A Drunken Post
A small guide to not being a rubbish tourist in Rome
I hope you said goodbye to cohesive timetables, sensible living hours and general sanity because these things really do not matter out here. Whatever stereotypes you may have heard about Italy and the Italians, I want you to bring them to the front of your mind. They are true. All of them. Well perhaps not the one about the hairy women, although I have yet to check. Don’t be daunted though, because hopefully in the following article I will be able to shed a little light on what is, in my opinion, the most beautiful, the most luxurious and the most unendingly complicated city in the world.