Alcohol

Ask most people to name things associated with Russia then vodka and/ or alcohol are going to be high up on that list. This isn’t helped by those who remember Boris Yeltsin ‘leading by example’ as president, which included him standing outside the White House in his underwear trying to hail a cab to go for a pizza! So, I thought I’d take a look at whether this stereotype was fair or not.

refreshing...

It’s salad, Jim, but not as we know it.

When I grew up in the north of England, salad wasn’t unusual but it certainly was unspectacular. I’m not saying I’m common but salad was a couple of leaves of round lettuce, a tomato sliced into six and five or six slices of cucumber. The seasoning was salt. Posh people poured drizzled dressings over it. We didn’t, so salad for us was purely vegetables. In contrast...

Mushroom meadow

The Beginning

I don’t remember when my feet began to itch. I never had that sense in childhood that I wanted to travel the world, only a slightly peculiar interest in looking at maps and learning countries’ capitals.