The Boy From The Black Stuff

Guinness is good for you. That was the slogan that was used for many years, it was almost promoted as a health drink, listing the amount of iron and vitamins you could get from a pint of the black stuff, theadvertisements had men carrying iron girders on their shoulders. They had another series of adverts [...]

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Paperclip

One red paperclip.Not that the colour is significant, so one paperclip, how much is it worth? What could you buy or trade for one little paperclip?
One man wanted a house. Naturally there’s very few people in the world who would want to trade a house for a paperclip, no matter what colour it is, [...]

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Mix tape

I love discovering new music and then sharing it with friends, opening their ears to something new. My favourite way of sharing music is by making a “mix tape”, technolocy has moved on but it’s still a mix tape to me. It’s a whole creative process, choosing the songs, working out the play order, the [...]

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Bumps in the Night

Nearly two years ago a friend of mine asked me to house-sit while she was away working Africa, and I did so gladly, she has a beautiful old house in an area I’d always wanted to live. The area is across the river from the Council houses where my father was grew up and were [...]

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Hunger

You say you love children but you wouldn’t eat a whole one….
In the time of Jonathan Swift, poverty was everywhere, the streets were lined with beggars, families had many children but not enough money to feed them, the children didn’t get an education and were sent out to work at an early age. It was [...]

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Land of Fire and Ice

3 or 4 times a year the people of Iceland get to escape, to go on wild shopping sprees in “cheap” places like Dublin and London. Extra planes are charted for this big exodus, they fly to Dublin and London and it’s a return of the Vikings. Like the Vikings they left their craft empty [...]

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Peacocking

There are songs that can fire your imagination, make you more than you are, puff you up, make you strut and give you a new persona, Isaac seems to have to have that effect on me.
Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?(Well, I’d like to be modest but I [...]

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Whirl

I’ve got a friend whose life always seems to be more eventful that everyone else. Not that she climbs Everest, base-jumps or calms enraged elephants, she lives a relatively normal life and seems to think that my life is exciting.
She’s the type of person who makes walking down a street into an adventure. Things just [...]

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Ode to the Lee-chee

Lychees.
She brought me lychees.
I had my first lychee sitting at Macquaries Point in Sydney, sitting on a bench waiting for a movie to start. I can’t say that it was a life-changing moment, it was only okay, the camembert we had as part of the picnic was so much nicer.
It was only a couple of [...]

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Waiting

Airport
The scene of hellos and goodbyes, tears and smiles, departures and arrivals. A gateway to beyond…
Airports were almost a second home for me last year, I visited 25 different airports, not only that but I passed through the two airports in KL no less than 10 times, probably more than the average Malaysian, I think [...]

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