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Continue reading →: Laou BeachI’m spending this week at Laou Beach on the Mediterranean, about a hundred kilometres south of the Tangier peninsula and the Straits of Gibraltar. I had thought I would get into the Rif mountains, but this is a very pleasant and relaxed place, and the cloud has been over the…
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Continue reading →: Mistress Koharu by Noboru Tsujihara
translated from the Japanese by Kalau Almony This is an opportune and relevant absurdist novel about power grabbing and greed, related to lust. The Koharu of the title isn’t the usual sort of mistress, she is a ‘life-sized love doll’, owned by a single man of 39 years old, Yano…
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Continue reading →: The Brittle Age by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein – published June 2025 This powerful and unsettling little novel is set in Abruzzo and the nearby Maiella mountains of the Apennines and based on an actual crime. The story concerns two young women at the end of a week of camping in…
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Continue reading →: Crossing
Turkey / Georgia 2024 All of last year I didn’t see a film I scored as a ten, and yet only a few days into 2026 and I’ve found one. I haven’t see a film by Director Levan Akim before, but after this I will seek out all of his…
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Continue reading →: Back to the MedDuring my week at Ouled Chmicha, Laurent’s permaculture guest farm, there were only the two other visitors I mentioned in my last post, the young Dutch couple at the beginning of their six month sabbatical from work, and the young woman having a weekend break from the pace of city…
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Continue reading →: Moonlight Express: Around the World By Night Train by Monisha Rajesh
Non-fiction – Travel – Published August 2025 It wouldn’t be difficult to criticise Rajesh’s work; most of her journeys and excursions in the places she explores are financially far beyond the majority of her readers, and I don’t think such a piece of travel writing is the place to air…
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Continue reading →: In ZaërI’m spending a week on Laurent’s permaculture farm in the gentle mountains of the Zaër region in the province of Benslimane roughly between Casablanca and Rabat. It’s very much my sort of place. It has a rough and muddy track that crosses rivers to get in an out, 5 kilometres…
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Continue reading →: Come Down To A Lower Place by Seoyoung Yi
translated from the Korean by Janet Hong – published October 2025 This is the second in a series of books called Lovecraft Reanimated published by the Stockport publisher, Honford Star. I’ve also read The Call of the Friend, the first in the series, which is a short graphic novel, not…
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Continue reading →: Double Room by Anne Sénès
translated from the French by Alice Banks – published October 2025 I have never used a virtual assistant. It’s not the technology that puts me off, in fact the reason I don’t use such help is difficult to pin down. Perhaps it’s just my generation. I’ve come across two good…
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 