

My father has two favourite stories about me growing up, both from around my sixth or seventh year. And by favourite I mean two thirds of all the stories he tells about me as a child. (The other being the time I harassed an unfamiliar woman in the supermarket for buying cigarettes.) The first...
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Here’s a little tip if you’ve a mind to go on an English megalithica excursion: do it in early January. Everyone complains about the weather but which annoys you more: the fact you have to wear wellington boots or the arrival of packed tour buses? Exactly. We had the place entirely to ourselves for...
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It’s wonderful when you can build relationships with places that aren’t your home. Since leaving Bristol, we try to get back to it several times a year, not to see specific people but just to be in Bristol… just really soak in it like a hot tub. In New Zealand we had Queenstown and...
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Here is how a small guidebook I bought on the ferry to the Isle of Mull opens: A traveller was asked by an old Highland gardener where she had been. When she told him he said “Ay! Iona is a very thin place”. What did he mean, she asked? “There’s no’ much between Iona...
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A really fun, enjoyable movie. You should see it. When I was at film school we studied the first ever serialisation of the Ramayana on Indian television in the 1980s. At the time the country was a long way from becoming the next global economic powerhouse like it is today. It was still extremely undeveloped....
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The magical community -and newly minted witches in particular- can be a dreary bunch when it comes to fantasy films or television. “That’s not how magic happens! That spell wouldn’t work! There’s no such thing as thaaaaaat!” As previously mentioned, my father is a doctor. I remember when ER first appeared on Australian screens...
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