Unusually for me, most of my favourite books this year have been non-fiction, and it's true that I've read a lot more of this kind of book in 2019. It's probably due to a reorientation towards studying again, meaning that I have to spend most of my free time reading books that are mostly informative … Continue reading My best books of 2019
Recently, I went on a field trip to a nuclear waste storage facility called COVRA in the south-west of the Netherlands. The area is called Zeeland, the least populous province of this densely populated country. This watery land is criss-crossed by a series of large barriers, dams, and dykes which were put in place after … Continue reading Nuclear storage and the future: “Welcome to the new age”
This list will be updated the more I come across, and the more time I can find... 🎬 Films Anthropocene: the Human Epoch Into Eternity Sea of Shadows Whales Weep Not Werner Herzog documentaries Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Survival Vive la baleine! (Three Cheers for the Whale) 🎧 Podcasts Mothers of Invention National Geographic, … Continue reading Environmental Humanities: books, podcasts, films, etc.
There is a surprisingly large number of people who go around dreaming about an island...Tove Jansson, 'The Island' (1961) Day 1 Sometimes the island was half in shadow; it appeared to her that the darkness was not entirely benign. It wasn't a mere absence of light, or a failure of sunshine to get through vegetation; … Continue reading The girl who loved islands
A couple of years ago, I was taken with a book called The Outrun by Amy Liptrot. The author, whose parents are English but who had grown up on the Orkney Islands, returned to her hometown after a tumultuous decade in London that had culminated in alcoholism. Her beautiful book charts her recovery, and her … Continue reading “Probably the worst weather we’ve had all year”: finding space under big skies in the Orkney Islands, Scotland
The other trainees and me going off to the crew parade at Scheveningen! Read part I of my tall ships story here I am back, and this time, the ship was docked in Rouen, Normandy, for the Liberty Tall Ships Festival. It normally takes place every four years, but due to riverbank restorations it’s actually … Continue reading Tall ship sailing: Liberty Regatta 2019, Rouen to Scheveningen via the English Channel
I am on my way to Vannes, in southern Brittany, western France. It is one of my favourite regions in France since visiting 18 months ago on a wintry voyage. Now it is springtime, the pollen is wreaking havoc on my nose and eyes, and the daylight only seeps away at 22:30. Thanks to a wonderful scheme … Continue reading Learning to sail with tall ship Atyla in Brittany, France
Notre Dame has blown its top. It has lost its hair, that is all. I had been scared about how it might look, this friendly giant which woke me every week last year with the tolling of its Sunday bells. I am back to looking at it affectionately from a high window. I am home! … Continue reading To build a home
New Caledonia isn't a place many people have heard of. Sitting east of Australia, about equidistant from Melbourne and Auckland by plane, it's a sizeable collection of islands with a population nearing 300,000. The majority of the population is Kanak, the name for the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants who have existed there for 3,000 years. The … Continue reading L’Île-des-Pins (Isle of Pines), a paradise island in New Caledonia
It's quite the accolade in such a land of seemingly endless aesthetic wonder as New Zealand, but today I am crowning Mount Cook National Park the most beautiful in the whole of the country. Along with two cheeky young men from the Netherlands that I met in a hostel in Queenstown, I travelled to this … Continue reading Hiking the Hooker Valley trail and Mueller Hut in Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand
no cash on the highway 