What an unexpected delight to be invited on someone else’s honeymoon at our age! Amanda and Terry, fresh from their Eastbourne nuptials and family partying, and now here with us and the rest of the Anzere gang at the swish Suffolk resort of Corton (on-sea). But I’m jumping ahead. Arriving by train at Lowestoft, the…
The lovely Nagi (Nikki to her Western friends) greets us on arrival at the ryokan – the traditional Japanese inn – in Kiso Fukoshima. Nagi takes us straight out again on a tour of the village. Up to the old Samurai checkpoint where travellers were searched for weapons (you couldn’t be too careful who you…
It seems a long drive down the valley that we came up by Shinano train only the day before, the Kiso river snaking below us in a hurry to get down to the open sea. To borrow a line from ‘Out of Africa’ – ‘This water lives in Nagoya’ and is eager to get home.…
From our room on the 32nd floor of the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo we can make out mount Fuji in the distance – 124km away. The zoom photo doesn’t do justice to this sacred and iconic mountain, but our hopes of a more impressive shot from the bullet train a few days later – this…
China. I’ve waited a long time to come here. All those years captivated with the magical images conjured up by wonderful stories of this mysterious land. Confucius; The Silk Road; Chairman Mao; Opium Wars; Forbidden Cities; Ming Dynasties; Kublai Khan; Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons. And now at last it’s all here, waiting to fill…
“Cabbages and Condoms” is an unlikely name for a restaurant anywhere, that is, except Bangkok. Here it seems to be accepted like “Chez Gérard”, “Olympia kebab house” or “Pizza Express” would be elsewhere in the world. I had been told to come here, first by Jean, one of our customers, then by my “Rough Guide…
The lucky ones on the left side of the plane get the picture-perfect view of Mount Fuji as we make our silent way across the skies to Narita airport. I am on the right hand side of the aircraft, awakening lazily to the blue sky merging easily with the deeper blue of the Pacific Ocean.…
People are giving me very strange looks when I tell them I am going to Israel. As if to say ‘you can’t mean the Israel in the Middle East, just down the road from Iraq….?’. The foreign office website says don’t go there under any circumstances, the Euro 2004 qualifier between Israel and France has…
Things are not going to plan this winter. In January I was suffering arctic temperatures in New York, and now I am heading for Toronto in February. This is not what is supposed to happen. February should be meetings with food companies in the southern hemisphere sun – Cape Town, Sydney, or Rio. But no,…
I have discovered the secret of life – or at least a long and happy one. It’s in a country where you are surrounded by cheerful smiling people, where music is played everywhere you go, where the equivalent of ‘national service’ is to spend time as a Buddhist monk, and where the king plays jazz…
I have always felt quite at home in an aeroplane. It’s one of those times when you feel no guilt at doing absolutely nothing except stare dreamily out of the window, take your shoes off, and drink champagne. That is until I was on my latest South African visit and spending a night at the…
I am starting to panic. It’s late Sunday evening and tomorrow I have to give a presentation about our Recipe system in French, and I’ve lost my crib sheets. It’s well over a year since I last presented in French. The French side of my brain is now completely blank. I can’t even remember the…
I’m worried about my health. I think I am suffering from Business Class Syndrome. Physically I’m fine. It doesn’t attack you in the legs like the economy one. It gets you psychologically. I am travelling to Johannesburg in the new style British Airways 747 upper deck, fitted with the science seats that at the press…
It’s Wednesday, 2nd January, early morning, and the outside temperature gauge registers -5°C as we arrive at Luton airport. This is the start of a week when I am going to forget all about Food Production, and concentrate on Wine Production, and of course it’s consumption. We are leaving for the Valais region of Switzerland,…