We Do Adventure

Consider this our passage of time moment. Like in the movies we are acknowledging the time since our last post by showing the changing of the season. (Compare with the post below.) This is today in Jajce, a warm sunny day that might mean winter has passed. After a couple of weeks of catching up with friends and family back in the UK we're now getting back up to speed with our work here. Rowan was running a baking course last night and is out teaching art this evening. I spent the afternoon giving keyboard lessons. So we are back, up and running.

Nine years ago yesterday Rowan and I sat on a beach in Crete talking about the future. It was one of those moments that changes the way you see things from then on. For me it was the first time I realised I wanted to move on and do something different (well, sort of the same-but-different) from what I'd been doing up to that point. We came back from the beach to a text telling us a plane had crashed in New York and walked into a hotel bar to join a crowd watching live TV coverage minutes before the second plane crashed into the Twin Towers. The world changed that day. But for all the things that were different in the post-911 world what we were doing wasn't much changed, at least not dramatically so. Until two years ago. Two years ago today we arrived in Mostar , after an epic road trip across Europe, to start doing something the same-but-different in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was a life change unlike any I'd imagined, although Rowan had spent half her life wanting to d...

I don’t really want to write about the weather, it seems like such a cop out, but I will. What’s convinced me is the sorry situation I found myself in this afternoon. Ben’s family are visiting from Wales and as Ben doesn’t drive (it’s probably more accurate to say he doesn’t have a licence) I offered to play taxi for a spot of local sightseeing. So it was I ended up at Blagai in the pouring rain! Up at the source of the Buna water was gushing out of the cliff face at such a rate it was within an inch of overrunning the riverside cafes. As we sat huddled around some hot drinks I noticed I could see my breath. Ben’s younger brother started shivering and it wasn’t long before he was wrapped up in his sister’s spare cardigan. For Ben and I a freak week of bad weather in June isn’t too much to grumble about, even if we have been told, repeatedly, that there’s no rain in Mostar in the summer months. However you have to feel for his family who’ve flown in expecting a summer break. Not only ar...

Never underestimate the power of a late night conversation. There is the tale I would retell here – and a tale worth telling it is – but time does not permit me to delve into the details. However I cannot let an auspicious anniversary pass with drawing attention to one of the more defining dialogues of my life. It is three years to the day to when a few friends hijacked the small hours to ambush my comfortable consumerism. It was a battering. I was left under no illusions about my shallowness; with no excuses or adequate explanations for my seeming aversion for getting my hands dirty. That was then. Now, almost six months into a new life, things are different. I have taken giant strides toward meeting the challenges laid down for me. I won’t claim to be there yet but I’m definitely moving in the right direction. And so to my, discretely, unnamed assailants I owe a huge debt of thanks. We’ve often joked about that evening but it truly had a profound and lasting effect. I know it was pre...