The Black Lab

Visitors to London from New Zealand are often struck by an interesting paradox. Thinking they are visiting one of the world’s great cultural centres, they assume there will be ready access to good coffee in interesting surroundings. The shock of discovering that...

Morning Brilliance

Not to be outdone, nature does its bit and provides me with a brilliant display to wake to each morning. London is actually a pretty sunny place, but (apart from my flat) the English seem to have an aversion to windows and direct sunshine inside. This is what...

A Brutalist Surprise

Working right on London’s South Bank is an enormous thrill. Every day I walk out the school gate and into this incredibly vibrant and electric atmosphere – this image is of the Brutalist architecture of the National Theatre lit, as it always is on winter...

London’s West End

If I think about what brought me to London in the first place, this road seems to weave its way through the whole analysis. The street that I walked down when I visited here fleetingly, on two occasions, from New Zealand and that taught me what it could be like to...

Resolutions and Reflections

People’s resolutions for the New Year seem invariably to revolve around exercise, their health, the gym and the like. I have some goals that I’m working towards on the physical front (the Challenge Half in Barcelona is still on the cards, and one day...