For Christmas we decided to drive down from Miri to Kuching and stay at one of our favourite hotels - the Basaga.  It's an old colonial house away from the touristy riverfront with beautiful gardens which make it a green oasis amid the mouldy concrete of Kuching, which oddly means "cat" in Malay. On Christmas day morning I went for my customary run, which took me along the riverfront as far as this culvert and then inland back in the direction of the Basaga.  On the way I passed St Thomas' Cathedral, Anglican I think.  It was packed with worshippers, including an overspill standing on the steps outside, all singing carols.  All these people devoted to a church that originated in England made me feel a little embarrassed to be an English atheist.  If they had known I guess most of them would have been terribly shocked. Mostly in this society I keep my beliefs to myself, not because I feel scared or intimidated by people's faith, be it Christianity, Islam...

Sue left yesterday afternoon for meetings in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, leaving me with an empty apartment and a new car to explore with.  I started my day with a run in the opposite direction to my first run two days ago. I headed towards the bridge that links the peninsula to the centre of Miri, passing en route a large and completely deserted housing estate owned by Shell.  I ran into the estate, saying hello to several patrolling "auxiliary" policemen en route.  None of them challenged my right to be there - old white blokes seem to have a free pass. The estate is in idyllic pine woodland next to a palm-fringed and empty beach and is perfectly maintained - roads swept and hedges trimmed, although no one lives there anymore. Shocking when I think of how many people in Sarawak live in tumbledown shacks.  But then multi-nationals like Shell have the money to do what they want and they always look after their assets. On the return leg I ran into the Boa...

Seventeen days after getting a dawn bus for Rome in Locorotondo I finally arrived in Miri with Sue yesterday. This morning I pulled on my running shoes and went for an exploratory jog around the strange peninsula where Sue's apartment is located.  You can see from the map that Miri has a river which snakes inland and creates a long tongue of land between the main city centre and the sea.  This tongue is home to a bizarre combination of smart apartment complexes, like Sues, a golf course, a fishing village, an idyllic but rubbish-strewn and sandfly infested beach and the moorings for literally hundreds of oil rig service and supply vessels, some the size of largish oil tankers. I ran around the edge of the golf course to the tip of the tongue, where I spotted a couple of paunchy expats finishing a hole while a tanker the height of a four-story building slid slowly down the river behind them.  Then I turned around and ran back up the tongue before stopping to take t...

When I go out running in a strange place water draws me to it like a magnet.  On our last full day in Phnom Phenh I got up at 6am and headed for the Tonle Sap, a tributary of the Mekong.  After two days in the city I'd got used to the traffic, which behaves more like a crowd of people than vehicles.  When we first arrived we took ages waiting for a clear space to cross the road, until we realised you just have to launch yourself into the flow and vehicles weave around you like water in a rocky stream. Dawn is a good time to see the city as lots of people come out in the cooler air to stroll, run or take part in group exercises to pop music, doing a kind of cross between yoga, tai chi and line dancing in slow motion. When I reached the river embankment in the city centre I ran along the wide promenade and headed for the pleasure boat dock.  I carried on along the river back out of the city centre, past increasingly grubby workshops and shophouses until I reach...

On our first full day in Phnom Penh I went with Sue to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.  I'm very nervous about genocide tourism, but Sue was very sure she wanted to go and I decided to tag along. The Museum is located in the Kmer Rouge interrogation centre S - 21, which was formerly a primary school. The photograph opposite is of a notice in the complex and sets out the "rules" of S - 21.  During the three plus years of Kmer Rouge rule fifteen to twenty thousand people went through S - 21 and were executed in the "killing fields" outside the City.  S - 21 itself was only one of 150 or more such centres throughout Cambodia.  It is estimated that between one and three million Cambodians died during the rule of the Kmer Rouge and their notorious leader Pol Pot, or "Brother Number One".  The death toll was from executions, disease and starvation driven mainly by the Kmer Rouge's forced agrarianisation of Cambodian society. The museum itself is si...

We've been over a week in Cambodia now and my morning runs have taken me to some special places.  In Siem Reap, waiting for Sue to arrive, I ran five kilometres up the Siem Reap river, which was used to transport stones to the Angkor temples, and stopped at this bridge. En route I ran through the outskirts of town travelling against the tide of morning commuters on cars, bikes and motorcycles, many, disconcertingly, wearing face masks.  One woman sweeping the streets was concentrating so hard that she didn't see me and thrust her broom in my path, causing me to jump and at the same time let out a very audible fart.  We both laughed heartily as we went on our way. After Siem Reap we flew down to Sihanoukville on the South Coast, where we are staying at the fashionable Otres Beach.  On my first morning there I trotted down the beach and at about four kilometres found this river which a young guy was paddling across. Although it's the height of the season th...

My flights to Cambodia all went smoothly, unlike my temperament, which became increasingly frazzled as the journey wore on and on.  In Bangkok there was an agonisingly slow bus transfer across town from the international airport to the budget airline station.  The city looked alien under the tropical sun and towering clouds, like a colony on Mars and I became increasingly impatient with the traffic jams, although I actually had hours in hand. While waiting for my last plane to Siem Reap, the town that services the Angkor temple complex, I managed to log onto a free wifi service to find that Sue had overslept and missed her flight and would not arrive until Sunday. Then at Siem Reap there were delays as the bureaucrats threw in an extra form at the last minute, probably due to an Ebola scare, given that they were all wearing face masks. Things continued to go downhill as my taxi driver took me to the wrong hotel and I had to get a tuk tuk to finally reach my destinat...

I've been sat for hours now on two different planes gunked up with airline food. Breakfast is now being delivered to wake everyone up and lifting the blind the plane is suffused with yellow-white tropical light. In know it's probably at least 30 below zero outside but it looks warm. My heart is thumping with excitement. I can't wait to get out into Bangkok in search of my last flight.

The bus came in on time and I found an airport train in short order. I'm surrounded by the lazy, slurred roman accent. The guy on the next seat is a piece of shit in any accent. He and his partner are shabby and she looks bored. He speaks on his phone - "yes a group of Japanese. I don't know what's to be done". Whatever is to be done doesn't sound honest. Welcome to Roma!

I said goodbye to paolo at dawn in locorotondo and waited 30 minutes bus ticket in hand. It's a big comfortable double-decker beast which should get me to rome early this afteroon. Feeling tired already and impatient to get on my first flight of the day. 

I took this picture of dad and me two days ago. It was my last evening in the UK.  I'd just bought a load of second-hand camera equipment and it came with a remote controller, which I'd pointed and clicked at the camera with my left hand a split second before.  I made several attempts and this is one of the best. I said "goodbye" to dad yesterday morning then drove to Stansted. At Bari I was picked up by a minivan and taken to the underground carpark where I left my motorbike four weeks ago, parked next to a rather cool Chevy Corvette. The ride was dark and chilly and climbing the ridge back up to our house I hit thick cloud which left me and the bike running with condensation. After a fitful night I awoke to a stunning autumnal dawn.  I wandered around in my onesie taking photos, my heart thumping with the excitement of being home. Sometimes life goes too fast.

I'm sat in the my Dad's little back bedroom, with the junk that accumulates around someone old and disabled - a power chair, for the increasingly infrequent trips outside the house, a turntable for moving from chair to commode and a collection of cushions and dressings.  My time here is drawing to a close and from my point of view I've achieved a fair bit.  I've begun to establish myself as a funeral celebrant and have carried out my first funeral.  I had thought I'd want to write about this in my blog, but this now feels like a breach of confidence.  Suffice to say it strengthened my conviction that this is work I should be doing and I'm humbled by the trust that the bereaved placed in me. I've shared a lot of the celebrancy stuff with dad and this has had a positive impact on our relationship as well.  He has been very supportive really and I've also recorded a series of his wishes for what happens when he dies, including what music will be played ...

Sometimes when I'm travelling I get up early, put my running shoes on and just jog for fifteen minutes or half and hour, stop, look around at where my legs have taken me, then run back the way I came.  This habit has taken me to some interesting places.  If you start in a town you'll often end up in some quiet, out of the way spot in the country.  Some of them have really stuck in my mind - a rice padi on the island of Langkawi, a misty rural canal in Northern France.  Now I take an iphone around with me I can even take a photo and spot my exact location on a map. I'm staying in digs in Lincoln for the next three weeks and this morning, before dawn, I put on my running shoes and headed out of the city down the Nettleham Road.  Even at 6.30am there were lots of commuters driving into town.  It was colder than I'm used to in Italy and so I ran a bit faster than usual, trotting through the outskirts of town past cut-price gyms and Pizza Huts in modern in...

Waiting for the Ryanair flight to Stansted. It's dark a baby is crying.  I got to Bari on my motorbike riding through olive groves and vineyards in unseasonably warm weather. I did a deal with a car park in Bari to keep my bike there for a month at 3 euros a day. I was treated like royalty and guided to an underground parking space next to a Chevy Corvette. On the way to the airport the courtesy minibus driver talked enthusiastically of his time in Brixton. I'm off to the UK to attend the Humanist Celebrants' conference and to start putting myself about for celebrancy work.  Also to see Dad before I disappear to asia for three months and to catch up with old friends. I feel a bit scared a bit excited and a bit tired.

With Sue away in Borneo and me not working, the time can weigh heavy.  Especially on a grey, wet day like today.  Like so often in my life I feel in a kind of limbo.  In ten days I'm heading for the UK for a month to try to get my career as a humanist funeral celebrant up and running.  In two months I'm leaving for Asia to spend several weeks with Sue.  And, in less than a year we will have our occupational pensions and financially our lives will be transformed.  Normally I would go for a run or a bike ride to get my daily fix of exercise, but pressing my nose against the window and looking at our damp and chilly terrace I decided to go for a walk instead.  I took the car and parked on the steep escarpment that leads down to the Adriatic and then walked a circuit I often did with our little dog Milly. The walk takes you up a steep fire-break and along the top of the pine-fringed ridge to the hotel Lo Smeraldo ("the Emerald" in English).  The...

I'm sat in our land basking in the Autumn sun in what Sue calls our "mediteranean garden" - a corner set aside for her to try different plants, now sadly bare.  I'm going to be on my travels soon, so I'm experimenting with using my iPhone to make a post. Sometimes the country here is so beautiful I want to stretch out my arms and hug it.

We're on the cusp between summer and autumn here in Puglia.  I love this time of year - it's still warm, but the storms that mark the end of summer have made the country green and lush and the leaves are turning gold.  The air is full of rich smells - bonfires and fermenting fruit.  The market is overflowing with ripe produce such as melons, peaches and prickly pears and the vendemmia or grape harvest is just round the corner. This photo is of stuff I picked from our land during ten minutes of wandering around.  The colours reflect the season so well.  There's a lot to do on the land at the moment.  Right now I'm pruning the fig trees, which haven't been touched for four or five years and are tangled and overgrown.  Whenever I prune trees I have Erminia's dead husband Paolo invisibly at my shoulder whispering advice - "you prune olive trees to look like a wine glass, but figs like an umbrella".  At the time he told me this I had no idea why,...

I had an afternoon flight back to Puglia yesterday and so was able to spend a few hours with dad in the morning before driving from Lincoln to Stansted airport. Dad spends a lot of time waiting for things these days - his carers coming and going four times a day, me bouncing to and fro from Italy and one much bigger thing.  To alleviate the boredom he reads, watches TV and snoozes.  The snoozing is taking up increasingly more time and occasionally he even nods off mid-sentence, sometimes waking with a start and looking round in bewilderment. For me the time with him passes slowly and I catch myself checking my watch every few minutes.  Conversation is difficult because dad is slurring his words quite badly these days and so I invariably have to ask him to repeat what he says, which is frustrating for both of us.  The slurring is worse when he's tired, which is most of the time now. When the time finally comes round for me to go I lean down and give him a hug ...

I'm writing this on the sly while dad watches 'the Third Man" on the TV at a volume which is making my ears bleed.  He resents my tapping away at the computer, but if I don't do something I start to go stir crazy. I'm here with dad in his little suburban bungalow in Lincoln for four days before heading back to Italy.  I keep my sanity by going out in my hire car to the malls of Lincoln and aimlessly window shopping or by running errands and doing "odd jobs" that dad decides he needs doing. Yesterday I noticed that the glass in the display case where dad keeps his medals was cracked and I bought a picture frame with the intention of remounting them and hanging them on the wall.  He seemed pleased with the result as I took a step back to admire my handiwork.  The one on the right with the blue and white stripes was issued by the UN for his service in the Korean "peacekeeping operation" in 1953.  Some things don't change. I thought putt...

As we enter the last week in August I can feel the summer slip away like sand through the fingers.  Feragosto has come and gone and on Sunday our neighbours returned to their apartment in Bari after three weeks in the country.  Erminia refers to them dismissively as "u barese", the people from Bari, foreigners. Yesterday evening she stumped round, plastic bucket in hand, intent on collecting figs from the Bari people's neglected trees.  There's this one tree that has fruit that's especially good for drying she tells me.  I remark that I can see she has lost weight.  Actually she looks fitter and seems more mobile.  "Yes" she says with a frown, "I don't feel like eating anything.  I don't like this heat, it's bad and my brain is tired.  Know what I had to eat last night?  Bread and figs!"  Then she said "when I feel like this I used to go round to see Yanni."  Another frown as she shrugs petulantly. Suddenly, I feel v...

Our friend Rosemary came to visit last week so I've been doing the tourist rounds, finishing yesterday with a trip to Matera, the ancient town in Basilicata often used as a set for biblical epics because of its resemblance to old Jerusalem we are told.  It is quite a sight, a vast collection of medieval stone houses carved into a bowl of rock and criss-crossed with alleys and stairs.  It does look like my idea of the Holy Land, especially in August, as the surrounding country is empty, dry and dusty, the houses are made of sandstone and the Sun is pitylessly hot. Actually I was reluctant to go, I think because the last time I visited, several years back, I was feeling very depressed and so the place is associated for me with bad thoughts.  In the end I was glad we went, it is very beautiful, Rosemary loved it and I amused myself taking pictures of old doors. I waved Rosemary goodbye at Bari Airport earlier today, so now I'm back on my own in our little corner of...

I've been meaning to buy a smartphone for years and finally got myself a second hand iphone on e-bay when I was in the UK a few weeks ago.  Apart from anything else I was curious to see why so many owners seem to find them more interesting than real life.  I'm proud of the fact that it's second hand, it makes me feel less of a victim of consumerism knowing I picked it up at about a third of the price of a new one and without having to enter into a hire purchase agreement thinly disguised as a mobile 'phone contract. Four weeks later I'm attached to it like a baby to its mother's teet.  I use it for my shopping lists and I'm downloading an app a day to regulate my diet, provide me with a fitness programme and all manner of other useful things that I had no idea I couldn't do without.  I even take it running so it can tell me where I've been and how many calories I burned.  At night I go to bed with it playing me to sleep with BBC Radio 4. Now ...