Toyota Wreck

A pub in Tyburnia was not where I’d imagined I would end up for Sudan, but a BBC video clip from April 2019 established a link – unable to find a Sudanese grocery, I would have settled for much less – to set me on my way. Released shortly after the country’s president was ousted …

Kunta Kinteh Island

The aquatic heroics of a Berkshire woman in Mexico made news earlier in the week. She and her twin sister were swimming in a lagoon, when a crocodile attacked her sister and tried to drag her underwater. The woman managed to fend off the crocodile by repeatedly punching its nose and pulled her sister onto …

Revolutionary Nuns

High up in the list of fallacious food facts is the one about Marco Polo introducing pasta to Italy from China in the 13th century. Pasta was already thriving in Italy by that time – the idea that no one else had learnt to form wheat dough into shapes and cook them is preposterous – …

But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee

Have you seen the new season of The Man in the High Castle, the work colleague to my left asked the one to my right, in a tone suggesting mutual awareness of a shared interest. We were at a City pub after work on a summer evening, back when the times were still ordinary, unchallenging …

TroTro mates

A funeral in the Dominican Republic was picked up by the tabloids when it emerged the event was staged by a living person – for herself. Keen to see how she would be mourned, grieved and remembered, the woman lay in a coffin for hours and invited her family and friends to act like it …

Salt caravan

As far removed from anything we have in England as Timbuktu, said Jeremy Clarkson of the breath-taking scenery of the Scottish Highlands while filming there for his motoring series. More than the sentiment (which I agreed with wholeheartedly), it was the metaphor which caught my attention. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen …

The fall from the highest point

Whenever politicians eat fast food on camera, it is usually to make the rest of us plebs relate to them. This tactic often backfires. Either unflattering photos of them negotiating messy burgers make the papers, or they get judged for overcompensating for their privileged backgrounds. At least the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro had a good …

Under the shade I flourish

The annual lobster season in Belize opens every June to seaside festivals which celebrate the new haul by cooking it in every possible way. Of these, grilled lobster tails made my pick – it was time to for the barbeque to make its first 2021 Cook Every Country appearance while the recent sunshine spell remained …

Land of Frankincense

In a bygone age when international air travel was another thing we took for granted, my plane was starting its final approach to Muscat airport. I was here only for a connecting flight, so I kept my eyes glued to the window for a good look at the city before it disappeared behind me. Row …

Serendip

The scenes from a few days ago at the Mrs. Sri Lanka 2021, a pageant for married women, would not have looked out of place in the plotline of the film Miss Congeniality. Moments after crowning the winner, the previous year’s Mrs. Sri Lanka – also the reigning Mrs. World – declared the winner ineligible …