Recycling Cities: Hackney & Shoreditch, London
It takes seven hours to fly to London from the world’s most rapidly changing urban landscape, Dubai. The contrast is truly startling. A grey spring Bank Holiday gave opportunity to meet with family, seldom seen, in London’s East End. The projected 45-minute journey from London’s Cromwell Road to Hackney’s centre required one simple change: Tube […]
Reflexxions on Robert Frost, American Poet (1874-1963)
As I watched the Dubai sun set into its murky haze, never quite reaching the horizon due to dust suspended in the Middle Eastern air, our hotel had lit a fire in this hexagonal hollow globe, allowing the light of the flames to reflect into the darkening pool on the shore line.
Flight over Troubled Lands
Picture: City of Dubai skyline from Jumeirah Beach, East of the City After a one-hour delay, both technical and social, our Qantas flight had to unload the bags of a passenger who “decided he didn’t want to fly with us today”, our gleaming A380 lifts us off from the world’s busiest International airport, Dubai. We […]
United Nations of Dubai
Four decades travelling for business does not prepare one for the experience of a place like Dubai. A population of some 2.2 Million, only 15% of whom are local and 85% are expatriate guest workers makes for an eclectic mix. It’s a population that has doubled in ten years! It’s a city-state based on trade, […]
Heading Off to Dubai
It’s a strange feeling. I have spent 44 years travelling for work. I’ve clocked up more than 5 million miles. In all that time I must have flown over or through various ports in the Middle East 100 times or more. But I have never once set foot there. Today’s journey is to Dubai. For […]
New Chapter, The Journey Begins
The day started with a to-do list. Yes, like most days. The list that ends much changed from the good intentions of the dawn. Tomorrow a 35-day trip to the UK and France begins; to be with friends and family, to experience some wonderful sights, sounds and smells from a Europe I left thirty-nine years […]