Trash, rubbish, garbage, litter – I never know which word to use. But it all amounts to the same thing. My pet hate. One of the few things that bothers me about living in Peru. There are serious waste management issues here. Barely a day goes by I don’t see something involving trash that makes me wince. On trash collection days, people leave their plastic bags full of waste out on the street at dusk. The thousands of dogs that roam the city have a field day (I mean, night) an

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post, Old Friends, about the powerful impact books can have during childhood. The photo I used to illustrate the post was of a selection of books that had influenced me as a child. If you look carefully at that photo, you’ll see one of the books in the bottom row is My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell. I think I must have read it first when I was about 13 years old. I suspect it was the nifty title that caught my eye one morning as I

A relentlessly grey sky depresses me more than most things, except maybe a hangover. Or bickering kids. But I love rain, from the mist so fine it is like a cool breath against my skin, to the downpour that fills the body with restless energy and the mind with white sound. I've just returned from a weekend camping trip with my family, to a remote canyon five hours drive from where we live. The scenery is dramatic, made for thunderstorms, and sure enough, it rained the first ev