Somebody once told me that if you want to go to India, you have to give yourself time. Time to see, to taste, time to sink into the spirit of the land – but most of all, time to get sick. Because even if all the other things leave you cold and uninspired, you will…
My previous portero died unexpectedly. One day he was there – a fat and jovial man, bald, glasses, head pushed a little forward giving way to the staircase of rolls in the back of his neck, always with a kind word, or the latest English phrase he’d taught himself, Goot eebening, or just to hold…
Buenaventura Bravo’s main job during the Spanish Civil War was getting his goats out of the village and into the mountains. This was no top-secret mission, entrusted upon young ’Ventura by the besieged Republican government in Madrid, just something that had to be done; this was the day-to-day life that continued to unfold regardless of…
I was prepared for one of them to die.
Before I left the UK to go travelling, I made a list of family members I would come home for if they died. In a single week in October 2016, I lost not one, but two of the most influential men in my life: my granddads.…
I enter the hospital room and my body freezes. Before me stands a lifeless room full of clinical white light. Death lingers in the fringes, waiting for permission to feast. Bleach engulfs my nostrils. My feet shuffle past the door as I take in the slumped bodies occupying the room. Sunflowers sit in a vase,…
The reactions are diverse when you tell someone you've decapitated a live chicken in Vietnam: I’ve been laughed at for my inept bravery, labelled as a bloodlust sicko and given a pat on the back. One thing’s for sure: it peels open a fresh can of controversial worms.
Nearly all of us kill animals every…