Thanks for reading. This blog is an opportunity for me to capture some of the diversity of my writing interests. My muse tend to appear on my shoulder as I board an international flight although not all of my writing is inspired by travel and foreign places. These blogs have been the basis of a novel (Flowers of Baghdad) but there are a few other writing projects in progress besides. Please feel free to leave a comment. Or two.

Afghan Grass Trimmer

Always be deeply cynical of stories that float around the mail systems, especially if they are accompanied by pleas for prayer, and/or onforwarding. Emotion and fact rarely marry in the internet chapel. Despite the caution I found myself warming to the alleged story (see below) behind this picture of a soldier trimming a patch of…

Loading

Water Wars

I caught an interesting review of an article written by Wendy Barnaby (published in Nature). It was intriguing because it neatly flipped assumptions about why nations go to war, and going to war over water is a base assumption for many strategic assessments held by our governments. Perhaps fuelled by Mark Twain as well who…

Loading