One of the joys of blogging is being able to connect with writers all over the world, right here from The Dorf, Germany. One writer whom I “met” early in my blogging days was New Yorker Nova Ren Suma, who blogs at Distraction No. 99. Nova has inspired...

One of the things that I’ve had to face as a white South African is that the many advantages I had were largely due to my privileged position – the apartheid government spent more money on my education, made sure the hospitals I went to were better and...

Better people than me are doing it and I am not one to ignore a bandwagon. Behold the bullet point post: I wish I’d had the insight to make this blog anonymous – there are things I feel like saying but because people I know read Charlotte’s Web, I...

I don’t usually go for  alternate realities in my own reading, but my imagination has been captured over the years by the triumverate of The Lord of the Rings, Mervyn Peake’s superb Gormenghast trilogy and the Harry Potter books. I so much loved the...

I first started working as a corporate journalist 15 years ago, at one of South Africa’s big mining houses. It was as hierarchical as a company could be, with levels and grades and people who had corner offices and important art and people who worked...