Do you know, 10 Downing Street is just a bit… ordinary. At the same time, though, it’s really very special, and I think it’s the ordinaryness that makes it that way.
Tonight’s event - drinks with the Prime Minister - was smart dress, obviously, but other than that it was very casual. I didn’t wear a [...]

Rather excitingly, ‘the book‘, which has been one of the many things consuming so much of my otherwise-blogging time over the last few months is now printed and in my publisher’s hands.
And more importantly, some copies of it are heading my way, due to arrive ‘in a few days time’. Apparently.
That’s an impressively quick turn-around [...]

Hardraw Force
It’s been a bit quiet around here of late. Things have been busy, but most importantly we had a week away. Volkswagen lent us a car from its press pool and we took it to Yorkshire with the rest of the family to buzz around the Dales, drinking tea and eating scones in the [...]

So I spent today working from home. Around quarter past seven last night something - and nobody’s yet saying quite what - happened to the new bridge just outside Liverpool Street.
You know - the one that they were working on over the Easter break that they guaranteed would be completed on time, only for it [...]

The bonus of backdating blog posts is that you can write up your notes when you get back from travelling and post them on the appropriate day.
The downside is that anyone using a browser rather than a feed reader will probably miss them by not scrolling down past postings that then appear above them.
So as [...]

We are woken up by the musicians. They come stamping around the camp shortly after seven, standing by the flap of each tent and banging their drums. It certainly beats the hey-hey-hey Mickey Mouse message they played down the phones on a press trip to Disneyland Paris a couple of years back.
Today we were leaving. [...]

Today we left Marrakech, but not to go home. Instead, we assembled after our meeting for a briefing by Azim’s team. They gave us maps, emergency mobiles and the keys to a fleet of twenty-odd 4×4, and sent us off into the mountains.
The idea was that we would all make our way out of the [...]

Marrakech is famed for its Souq. At home we have markets, but they don’t compare to this knotted tangle of streets, lined by tiny businesses that will have been trading in its shady corners since the Normans invaded Britain. It’s many travellers’ sole reason for coming to Marrakech.
After an early briefing we split into groups [...]

Uma Thurman was on our plane. I had never imagined she would fly budget. Anyhow, there she was occupying the front two rows, with the aircrew fawning over her all the way from London to Marrakech, and taking photos with their mobile phones, which clearly weren’t turned off.
The first we saw of Morocco was the [...]

Well there’s a surprise. The meticulously-planned works that have kept Liverpool Street station closed since 23rd December have over-run. The bridge they were removing has gone, and the scheduled upgrades to a handful of stations have been completed, but now they have problems with the overhead lines, and the station is stranded, cut off from [...]