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Continue reading →: An Update From ShapIt’s good fun being back at work again, and in a stressless role. There’s a line in the first season of The Bear when an older experienced front of house at a very smart restaurant explains to Richie (in training) how he made the adjustment from healthcare to working in…
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Continue reading →: Sinners
USA / Canada / Australia 2025 Long may the recent lean towards genre-blending in films continue. Following Emilia Pérez comes this hybrid western / musical / fantasy / horror / drama / comedy piece. Even the music is of stark contrast, from the blues the setting of 1930s Jim Crow…
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Continue reading →: Good One
USA drama 2024 I was foolish enough to say to a friend on Friday that it had been a pretty average year for films so far. The following two nights I watched two films that are the best I’ve seen so far this year, and turn that statement on its…
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Continue reading →: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Climate Fiction – Australia – Published March 2025 This is an entertaining piece of climate fiction that feels exaggerated, and with plenty of convenient coincidences, to reach a wider audience. I can’t really argue with that, or label it as a criticism; it seems the book is getting plenty of…
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Continue reading →: A Carnival of Atrocities by Natalia García Freire
translated from the Spanish (Ecuador) by Victor Meadowcroft – Publsihed April 2025 One day a number of people walk out of their Ecuadorian town of Cocuan, a place that is not on maps, for no apparent reason, other than they see their town as being ‘a carnival of atrocities’. They…
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Continue reading →: Dearest Sister
or Nong Hak – Horror – Laos 2016 A teenage girl from a poor and remote Laos village arrives to the city to after her blind cousin, and finds out that her cousin has the ability to speak to the dead, though neither realise at first, that their messages are…
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Continue reading →: Shap, Cumbria: the hiking season and back to work..I was only back in Shap for 3 days and the hiking season started, which meant work. Though I’ve done a few hours online work each week, I haven’t actually attended for any work for six years, something of a shock to the system. New Ing Lodge provides bed, breakfast…
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Continue reading →: Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History’s Greatest Arctic Rescue by Buddy Levy
Non-Fiction – Published January 2025 Levy is at his best when writing about Arctic Exploration. I’ve read much of his work and prior to this my favourites were <i>Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition</i> and <i>Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of…
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Continue reading →: North Sun: Or, The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford
American Historic Fiction – Published March 2025 Set in 1878, the last years of the American whaling industry, this is the story of the doomed expedition of a fictional whale vessel. At first, life on board the Esther mirrors, intentionally I think, that on the Moby Dick; long periods of…
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Continue reading →: Kerrigou Beach & back to Cumbria
Kerrigou beach was the perfect spot to be within fifteen minutes drive from the Roscoff ferry. But tell no one. It’s a six vehicle car park and neither the space nor the access road would be big enough for anything more than a medium wheel base van. Notably, it isn’t…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias.
Where is Andy?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 