The phone rang. “Hi! This is Mike, a neighbour of yours. I read the blurb you posted about your writing in the mailroom. Can I buy you a coffee?” Without thinking, I agreed. Did I make a mistake? Mike was so ordinary. If you gazed into his face for an hour, you’d...

“The mandala – the Buddhist Wheel of Life – revolves through six realms. The inhabitants of the Hungry Ghost Realm are depicted as creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs and large, bloated, empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction, where we...

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 of burgeoning millionaires on every street, thanks to stock they’d...

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, he was presumed to be homeless, taken to a paupers’ hospice and left to...

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 hear: David had risen against Goliath, destroying a third of Russia’s...

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 entourage to arrive. Already fifteen minutes late. They eventually show up....

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 “family” trip was for Alex’s christening, when my whole English family and...

“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… my dentist’s surgery. I’m lying prone on my back on a flat bed, the...

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 your diary. I brought you this.” “But Hamid, I’ve used plastic bags...

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 or insert itself at the end. It is as certain to come as death and...