Everyone loves the film Zulu, and Boxing Day wouldn't be the same in its absence. As a record of an historical event, it doesn't stick entirely to the truth, but it's a fair approximation. One of its major failings, however, is its unfair portrayal of, firstly, Henry Hook as a skiving malingerer - he was nothing of the sort - and, secondly, of Acting Asst. Commissary James Dalton as something of an effete idiot.<< MORE >>

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After a less than friendly exchange with a shop assistant in France over a 3G top-up last summer, I wondered how it would go here in S.A. I needn't have worried. All they needed was the SIM card's phone number and we were good to go. They need the number because, rather than giving you a code number to type into your device, they credit the additional data direct to your card. The only slight problem was that I didn't have details of the card's phone number with me, but the lady in ... << MORE >>

As reported, there was no 3G signal in the Drakensberg, but it reappeared as soon as we got back on the N3 to Durban. That was fortunate because our TomTom GPS (with the latest map update) still thinks that Durban International Airport is at the old location rather than the new King Shaka Airport (44km away, to the north) and a quick check with the iPad confirmed that TomTom was wrong. << MORE >>

Certain categories of South African driver - no names, no pack drill - are a little too keen to flash other drivers on the freeway. There you are, overtaking the world's longest lorry which is towing the world's longest trailer, and the aforementioned driver starts simultaneously driving up your backside and flashing his headlights. Where the hell does he expect you to go? << MORE >>

My plan to ask a friend to buy a PAYG data SIM for the iPad in advance of the next trip to South Africa was stymied by the requirement for the card to be registered in the buyer's name. I suspected that would be the case but I was just hoping to reduce the time taken to get out of the airport.... << MORE >>

For nearly eighteen months, since a seemingly minor accident almost severed my left Achilles tendon, pain has been a pretty constant companion, and painkillers my best friends. If it hasn’t been the left ankle, it’s been the overloaded right leg or the sciatica from a lumbar spine abused by walking at unnatural angles. Given my enforced interest in the subject, my attention was recently caught by a comment that ‘you can only feel pain in one place at a time’....<< MORE >>

It's not often I come across a word I haven't encountered before, but here's one: desuetude. It means to be in a state of disuse or inactivity.

I came across it in Peter May's novel 'The Black House', the first of his Isle of Lewis trilogy. It's a good read, and particularly strong on sense of place.
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Back in the days when I was regularly writing magazine articles, I had a piece published entitled Jersey's Stone Age Past. The article centred around the outcrops of peat which had appeared in Jersey's St. Ouen's Bay after winter tides had stripped away several feet of sand, and this same peat has reappeared in recent weeks.<< MORE >>

When I was a child, my mother told me that her grandfathers had worked in two of Birmingham's major industries: the gun and the jewellery trades.  By the time I was born, the family had moved away from the Midlands, I felt no link to Birmingham and investigated no further.  A life in the shooting sports eventually lead to an interest in British shotguns and an urge to find some information on my great-grandfather, William Spendlove. << MORE >>