On Travel | Sunday 10 May 2026

^{Screenshot from Too Long in Exile playlist on Youtube. Strangely reminiscent of the The Great Gadsby.}

Field Notes
It's a cool morning here, with a cold front coming in from the northwest bringing lower temperatures, wind and rain. The sunrise was 05:17 on this chilly morning in the East Midlands of England. I write continuously in the early morning until eight or nine, although nothing has made it to print yet. Today, I fetched my notebook, looked at the few sad, scribbled lines and wrote the date on a fresh page.

Sunday 10th May 2026

It's a cool morning here, about two hours after sunrise. The sky is a dull light grey, the trees ruffled by random breezes, every part of them alive. A few cars on the road, but otherwise it is quiet.

The first time writing for a long time. For a moment I seized up, at the point of reaching for my notebook. Nothing there, but then I remembered the programme about Van Morrison, Van Land, and that strange song resonant of being a young person, listening to my teenage cousins searching for Radio Luxembourg on the radio in the bungalow at Saltdean, In the Days Before Rock and Roll.

I remember standing in a shop in Southport looking at some frippery, the recycling of other people's attics and linen presses, and a song came on with that unmistakeable Van signature, catching me in the first few bars. I waited out the song, thinking it ...

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... was part of a play list, but no, it was the first track of an album, Too Long In Exile.

Yesterday they talked, Ralph McLean and Steven Cockcroft, of the long relationship and collaborations with John Lee Hooker. For many years I had an old tape of the programme where they played together Baby Please Don't Go on a Greek mountainside.

Lee Miller and Martha Gellhorn have been a lot on my mind. Romantic dreams of travelling to Kabul and Mogadishu, and more realistically, Shanghai. Looking for that ex-pat culture, absorbing the sights and smells, taking them in through your skin, Michael Caine in the The Quiet American appearing like a ghost at the feast.

More prosaically, I have a trip to Cyprus for a couple of weeks, perhaps we will visit the silent deserted city of Famagusta, Pyla sitting in the buffer zone and the fortress at Girne. I used to have a friend there, Richard, who travelled ...

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... to difficult places, trying to create new economies. I remember his glasses wardrobe laid out neatly in the bedroom on a tiny hand towel. He had a lemon tree his neighbours would water when he was away on his missions. We did write a time or two, he had married the last time we were in touch. I hope he is happy. I remember crossing the border leaving my sister on one side and Richard waiting for me on the other.

We talked about Barcelona yesterday, and travelling down before or after to Seville and Granada. I thought of Madrid, but I can fly there for a weekend for the art. It's a long time since I've been there staying near Algeciras and realising I could see Africa across the water. We made the 35 minute trip to Tangier, the souk and camels and rugs made of silk.

Tomorrow I make another trip into town to meet a friend for lunch and then into John Lewis to get the latest version of travelling: the cabin case with four wheels and 360 degrees directional spin.

Field Notes - Ideas for future works
Van Morrison and memory/music geography
Cyprus and borders/friendship
Tangier and proximity to Africa
romanticised danger in travel imagination
the evolution from analogue travel to frictionless modern transit
expatriate atmospheres and “ghost worlds”