a collection of short literary or philosophical extracts
Not all ideas fit neatly into the pages of a book. When I see, hear or read something that moves me—a news story, a snippet of conversation, a musical phrase, a storyline or cityscape—I capture the thoughts it provokes by jotting them down. From art and sports—whether Wimbledon or the World Cup—to politics, love and war, all topics have the potential to spark my imagination.
8 December 1996. The whole world was mesmerised by a penny stock company based in Alberta, now worth US $6 billion — from nothing. Anecdotes abounded in small towns and villages across the province...
A tram struck him down one evening on his way to inspect the work-in-progress at the Sagrada Família. No one recognised the old man in dishevelled clothing. As he carried no identification papers,...
Battered by the never-ending waves of gloom and doom — the skeletal images of starving children in Gaza, the doubling of Trump’s tariffs, the pounding of Ukrainian cities — I woke up exulted to...
We’re sitting in a boardroom full of lawyers, accountants and advisers—six of them with a combined charge-out rate of between $6,000 and $8,000 per hour. All waiting for the President and his...
Next to my dentist’s surgery, my favourite stopover is the Old Dutchman’s Dairy Farm (now renamed Dutchmen Dairy) in Sicamous, British Columbia, on the road from Calgary to Vancouver. Our first...
“To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.” William Blake Auguries of Innocence My favourite place to visit is…...
It was a sad day when Hamid returned from his holiday in Morocco. He brought me a present: a very expensive-looking, soft-leather mini satchel. “I’m so tired of seeing you use plastic bags to carry...
As a budding author, each week I have to withstand the ordeal of an interview. In over a hundred of them, the same question crops up time and time again. It may come at the beginning of an interview...
Each summer, the first day of our family visit to London was always a stroll through Piccadilly with Alex. Laura and Chris, uneasy travellers by plane, were shaking off their jet lag in our hotel...
Standing in line at our local Safeway checkout, I observed the most beautiful woman. She must have been sixty, yet age had not withered her. Glancing away so as not to seem obvious, I turned my head...
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Emil Rem, an eccentric accountant becomes a writer of eccentric characters, in exotic locales—each chapter taking us on a trip into his fascinating twisted world. Born to a close knit, middle class Muslim East Indian family in Dar-es-Salam, Africa in the 50’s, he is then moved to Maidenhead England at the age of five. The next twenty years are spent shuttling between England and East Africa, wearing a St. Christopher’s cross one minute and attending church, to wearing a green armband and attending Muslim religious classes in Africa the next. Moving to Canada, marrying a woman from the Philippines and having two boys only adds further texture to his stories.
