Back in 1998 I had the pleasure of spending a couple of weeks travelling around Lebanon:

I have to say it was one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring and friendly places I've ever been. The scenery can be breath-taking, from sandy beaches to mountains to forests to deserts, it's got the lot. There are ancient ruins built at the height of the Roman empire (which means they're the biggest) including the largest standing columns on earth. My jaw was on the floor looking at some of these monuments in Baalbek. And the people were not what I'd expected at all. After years of war I thought I'd find people with their heads down, battle-hardened and bitter. But I found people young and old with a bright, optimistic outlook on life who were amazingly friendly and more westernised than me! In fact I'd rate the people I met above New Zealanders on the friendliness scale - and that's saying something.

But the one thing I took away from the trip was that the picture I had in my head before going of what Lebanon was going to be like, especially with the friction with Israel over the border (which I went to - quite an intimidating area with all the razor wire and UN troops) from the western media was completely different to what I actually saw. Up until then I assumed that people like the BBC would bring you the truth but there's no such thing as the truth, just someone's opinion on a series of events. And they won't necessarily be your opinions if you're there on the ground. Plus the media have to watch what they say, they can't go taking sides - even if they're right - especially against large, powerful nations, so they take the middle ground. It was eye opening to see things first-hand without the media bias. Don't believe all you hear!

However the fact that Lebanon was no longer a place to be feared and looked to have a bright future with Israel pulling their troops out, peace throughout the country and Beirut being rebuilt made me happy. Lebanon deserved a break from once being the Paris of the Middle East to a war-torn nation. The people deserved it.

So it won't surprise you to learn how sad I was to see it all kicking off again. I'm not going to take sides and say Israel are wrong for bombing Lebanon (which they are - Hezbollah having munitions in civilian areas? ask yourself who's telling you that's the truth and if it's just an excuse), and I'm not going to say it's wrong for Hezbollah to launch rocket attacks at Israel (which they are - what do you expect to happen if you do that?). The time for saying who's to blame is long passed. After decades of terrorism in Northern Ireland it was abundantly clear that at some stage or another people were going to have to just stop fighting and move on. No amount of bombing, military presence, arrests or anything was going to stop it. You can't make one side give up by intimidating them - especially when it's on their home soil.

It doesn't matter who throws the first stone. If someone gets hurt, then retaliates and someone gets hurt on the other side, then it just goes on from there from one side to the other. For every civilian that gets killed in an Israeli bombing raid you're creating more Lebanese who hate Israelis. For every rocket that kills an Israeli you're going to create more Israelis who want blood spilled to even the score. It's human nature. And it's completely self-defeating.

It's disappointing to see the international might of countries like the USA and UK just standing by watching without attempting to intervene. Although to be fair, Israel is a nuclear power who don't have to listen to people like the USA if they don't want to. But if Israel end up occupying Lebanon again then you can expect many more years of war - and it's so obvious that's the outcome it amazes me the Israeli leaders think it's the best approach to meet their goals.

I just feel badly for the people. It's always the innocent civilians that get caught in the crossfire in situations like this. If someone was bombing my town and my family was killed, you can bet I'll pick up arms against them. And I won't care if what they're doing is just in their eyes, my hurt and pain will motivate my revenge plenty. And since violence begets violence, it'll never end. And if I can think that way, then so can anybody, no matter how friendly, positive and hospitable they are. War is easy. Peace is very very hard. Never take the easy option.

I spent the weekend over on the east coast of Yorkshire with a whole bunch of photographers in places like Whitby, Staithes and Robin Hood’s Bay. My friend Ade got to know them from a photography site and they periodically meet up to take photos, talk about photography and kit and drink alcohol! It’s the first time I’ve done something like that and it was a bit strange being in a group of 13 people standing on a beach with tripods, expensive cameras and all the paraphernalia.

It was really good fun though. As well as meeting some real characters it’s interesting to see what shots other people take, how they look at things, what they do with a camera, what’s going through their minds and so on. There were some very talented photographers there and it’s not often you get to pick the brains of that many of them at once!

I took this picture in Staithes and it’s the first one where my girlfriend actually said “wow” when I showed it to her! (Her exact words were: “that’s as close to a wow photo as I’ve seen from you” - these Yorkshire folk don’t give out compliments easily you know). I think I’m going to get it blown up to a decent size and hang it on one of my walls at home.

Anyway, I took more than 300 shots over the weekend which is a lot to go through! It’s going to take me a while to sort through them, decide which ones I like enough to work on and upload them. You can see the set here. Enjoy!

Oh, and note to self: I really need to stop buying more camera kit from ebay and other people - this is going to be an expensive month!

My good lady, a couple of friends and I went over to the east coast on Sunday to try and take some photos. I was picturing in my head shots of cliffs, the sea at the bottom lashing the shore, a path along the top and a moody sky rich in colour and texture. Unfortunately we got rain and low cloud instead.

However, it turned out to be pretty good for photography - aside from having to dry the filters after every few shots. It did stop raining long enough for me to try and take a photo of a swan - annoyingly it beat its wings and looked majestic (as swans do) whenever I turned my back so I didn’t get a decent shot! Never work with children or animals… I did, however, get this:

It was worth the wet feet. No wait, it’s the fish and chips that made it worthwhile. Nice!

My girlfriend, her parents and my father met up this weekend at the place we’re getting married in July. Being a guy I’m not really into weddings. I thought I was the only one to wonder at the point of putting on such a big show when we’ve been together for six and a half years already and living together for over two, but it turns out that weddings are a girl thing. A lot of my married friends admit that it was the girl who organised the whole thing and they pretty much “turned up on the day”. So with that burden of guilt lifted I can look forward to it without feeling I have to get as excited as my good lady!

Anyway, it was a nice, albeit short trip up north not helped by the fact that I was a bit knackered. However it was good to see the place and check out the local accommodation for guests. Oh, and as I had my camera I insisted we go and find a ruined castle or something equally as interesting to take pictures of…

This isn’t the castle I’m getting married in, this is Caeverlock Castle which has seen better days. What I often forget having grown up in Scotland is that castles are quite a novelty to many. Scotland is covered in the things so I’ve never really paid much attention to them (apart from Eilean Donan Castle - the one in Highlander).

What is interesting is that the area around Dumfries (where we were) is where a lot of interesting 13th and 14th century history happened that I learned about in school - there are more Robert Bruce memorials than you can shake a stick at. Maybe I’ll finally buy my self a copy of Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland by G.W.S. Barrow and read it without my history teacher looking over his half-moon glasses at me!

One of the things I like about my current job is that it involves a 40 minute drive in the morning and evening (except Wednesdays). You might think this is a pain but if you’re a serial singer like I am then it’s great!

It’s a well documented fact that I like singing and especially when I’m driving. If they handed out record contracts for effort rather than talent I’m sure I’d be mid-way through a world tour. Actually, they do that already - maybe I’m just not good looking enough… But anyway, I’ve heard my singing and while I can sing some songs in key, I’m certainly not going to be putting myself forward for the next series of X Factor. As an aside, most of the people who go to these talent shows need to realise two things:

1. Enthusiasm doesn’t make up for a lack of talent.
2. Shouting isn’t the same as singing.

I think 40 minutes is about right for a drive to work. That’s a total of 80 minutes which is just a bit longer than the average length of a CD - this means I can listen to the whole CD and have time to flick through my favourites on the way home. I can then change CDs for the next day and the cycle continues. Any less and my voice doesn’t get the chance to get properly warmed up in the morning (some might argue that it never does get going). And more means I’m in danger of playing a CD to death and considering - I dread to say this - turning the radio on.

My in-car singing has some interesting side-effects though. Firstly, when I’m playing some 80s power ballad I’ll naturally want to look to the heavens, close my eyes and clench my fists to really hit the high-notes (think of the chorus to any song by Spandau Ballet). This is not a good idea when you’re either driving at high speed or nosing through traffic - I’m pretty sure there’s a section of the highway code on the subject. Secondly, there’s the possibility of an audience. When I still lived in Scotland I was once stuck in traffic in Dundee. I was on a filter lane to get onto the Tay Bridge and was signing my heart out as usual. I had this strange urge to look to my right and saw a car full of girls watching me and laughing at my performance. I just smiled at them and carried on - I believe the song was coming up to the chorus and there were some high notes! Yep, if you’re going to do something you might as well go all out for it - there’s no sense holding back.

The other problem comes when I get to the office and listen to more music through my headphones. I’ve just spent the last 40 minutes straining my vocal chords and I have to remember to not burst into song in an office full of people. You can get away with it in a car - at least the people outside can’t hear you killing Tony Hadley’s finest hour…

I’ll never forget my first holiday abroad. My friends and I decided to drive from Scotland to the French Alps and camp there. I was nervous with anticipation. We planned the whole adventure with the sort of meticulous detail that would make an Army General smile. We spent hours and hours poring over maps of the area we wanted to go to until we felt we knew it like we’d already been there.

I ordered my very first passport and was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t the black variety that James Bond had been using for years (in fact is was a much less cool dark red flimsy version). I’m sitting looking at my passport photo now and I see a guy who thinks he knows it all but I know that I’m just looking at some young kid who’s still wet behind the ears!

Anyway, the time came to leave and we kissed our parents farewell and began our long trip south. I’d driven to the south of England before and that seemed like a long way, but when we got down that far our drive had hardly begun! A short hop over the ferry and we were on our way - on the wrong side of the road. I don’t think we ever got used to driving on the right and managed to start every morning on the left and as a car came at us head-on we’d swerve over and remember where we were. Our plan was to get as far as Auxerre, camp there and head on to the Alps the next day. We were poor and young so we avoided the toll roads and stuck to the twisty back roads.

One friend was driving, another in the passenger seat and me in the back stretched out reading a book. I assumed it was a winding road as I was getting thrown around a bit and the driver was a bit of a nutter behind the wheel. When we arrived at our mid-way point he admitted that in fact he’d kept falling asleep at the wheel and was swerving to stay on the road! It was around 8pm and after a bite to eat we had a lie down in our tents, kids playing around making noise in a foreign language and we were asleep in minutes.

It’s hard to describe how I felt being in a foreign country where nobody spoke English by default for the first time. I felt like an outsider trying to figure out what was going on. Everything was different. But it was an adventure and I loved it. Next day we carried on to the Alps and we went from the flats of northern France to mountains as high as the eye could see. It was awesome.

We camped on the side of a mountain one night and got caught in a thunderstorm. Literally. I could feel the electricity in the air and although it was 11pm the lightning - that was striking all around us - made it as light as day. The thunder would clap as the lightning struck in sheets, then the thunder would echo all around us and the lightning would strike again. It was constant and I was both exhilarated by the sheer power of nature and humbled by how small I felt. Incredible.

We sampled the joys of French cuisine and it was superb. Even buying a simple baguette from the supermarket was a treat - their bread seemed to taste far better than over in the UK (and as I later found out, it really is). All these new and fantastic experiences blended into one. I was overwhelmed. We climbed up to a glacier above Chamonix and when we got there I looked out over the valley and asked “where the hell is it?” only to be told that we were looking at it! Of course, I was expecting a pristine white glacier like in the Himalayas but didn’t expect it to be covered in debris. I realised my mistake and was impressed, until a helicopter flew over the glacier and I got the perspective of the scale of the thing. The helicopter was a tiny dot - the glacier was huge!

It was a voyage of discovery from start to finish and we had the constant threat of my friend’s car breaking down at any minute (which it did actually). One of the most interesting aspects of the trip was experiencing different cultures. We went into a pub in a village we were passing through (we were tired). It was one of those places that when you walk in everybody goes silent and stares at you. We went to the bar and ordered a few drinks in our optimistic French. One of the guys at the bar asked where we were from and as soon as he realised we were Scottish suddenly we were everybody’s best friend! We played table football against some of the old guys - who completely hammered us, they could pass the ball around as if their plastic players were real people - and told them all about back home and listened to their stories. We left smiling.

Since that trip I’ve travelled quite a lot. I’ve been to America, Italy, Amsterdam, New Zealand, Antigua, Switzerland, Lebanon, Andorra and a few other places I can’t think of right now. It’s become very easy. Take Thursday for example. I’m flying to Lyon to stay with one of my friends for a few days. Lyon was one of the places I passed through all those years ago. We decided to do it a couple of weeks ago and I booked the flights over the internet. It’ll take a few hours and I’ll be there. But rather than having my wide-eyed anticipation and trepidation of travelling to France like I did in 1996, I’m just looking forward to seeing my friend and his family. They could be living in Cornwall (with better weather), the fact that they’re in a foreign-speaking country a long way from home makes no odds to me.

In one way, I see the world as a pretty small place and think nothing of travelling to the other side of it. But in another way I’d love to have that feeling of adventure again. That innocence. That feeling of not knowing what’s around the corner. New sensations and feelings.

I guess that’s the price you pay with experience. You learn to know what to expect. But the picture on my passport is still of that innocent kid, and he’ll be coming with me on a trip down memory lane. It’s just this time Scott and Nick won’t be with me, but they will be in spirit.

I’m finally sufficiently over the post-holiday blues to write about my trip to New Zealand. In one word it was fantastic. I expected to be impressed with the place, enjoy the scenery and like the people (I know a few Kiwis and they’re all thoroughly nice people). I’d also seen photos, slide shows, spoken to people who live / lived / will be living there and read portions of the Lonely Planet guide so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. But nothing was going to prepare me for what I saw and how much I would love the place.

If you can’t be bothered reading my account then skip to the photographs here.

After our few days in Singapore we flew to Christchurch on the south island. Expecting to be jet-lagged we’d booked ourselves into a hotel for the first two nights before staying with friends who’ve just moved back over. They would be our base of operations. But travelling business class with those amazing flat folding beds we felt surprisingly well. Apart from having a few early nights you’d never have known we’d just flown around the world. So we had a bit of time to wander around Christchurch (the main city in the island with a population of around 330,000) and get used to the place. The sun was shining (a John Conners nice day no less) and we were ready for an adventure.

Our hosts suggested a driving route. We’d go with them over to the west coast (nicknamed the Wet coast on account of the high rainfall but we weren’t to see any of that) and stay at Punakaiki for a couple of days. Then we’d part company and while they went home to Christchurch my girlfriend and I would begin a road trip all the way around the south of the south island in an anti-clockwise direction taking in some of the main sights and places to see before returning to Christchurch. If you think New Zealand is small then you’re dead wrong. We spent nearly two weeks driving around the south of the south island covering about 3000km and hardly saw anything! You could spend a lifetime exploring the place.

I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow account of the trip because I could write a novel about it (you know how I like to be a bit long-winded at times) but I’ll save some of the stories for those “have I told you about the time…?” moments. The main highlights for me included going to Queenstown, the extreme sports capital of the world, where bungee jumping was invented, and going on a steamboat ride! Awesome. We went whale watching in Kaikoura, sat and looked at breaking waves for hours on many different sandy beaches, went to several sites that Lord of the Rings was filmed (including the mountain range in the opening scene of The Two Towers), went into the heart of Fiordland (literally a wilderness of sheer mountains, trees growing on cliffs and scale that is beyond human comprehension).

But the most jaw-dropping moment for me was a trip out Milford Sound. You see, I love mountains. And Milford Sound is surrounded by mountains. The drive from Te Anau to this isolated place is amazing. You go from flat country to alpine terrain to cliffs the likes of which I’d never seen. We stopped at one point and the more I turned my head to look at the mountains around us the more amazed I was. There were so many cliffs and tough, glacier carved terrain that I was in geologist’s heaven. Of course when we actually got to Milford Sound and went out on the water I was even more blown away. As you’ll see from the photos, the mountains rise almost uninterrupted from the water as sheer cliffs. What is difficult to put into perspective is just how large they are. There’s nothing to give you scale until you get really close to them and look straight up to realise that these impenetrable mountains are actually a mile high. Jaw-dropping. And I’ve seen the Grand Canyon so I know what big is.

My main take-home point from the holiday isn’t the scenery (which was incredible). It’s not the weather (which was pretty good the whole time). And it’s not the mountain biking terrain (which is excellent). It was the lack of people. Coming back to the UK it amazes me that so many people can live in such close proximity without more trouble than there is. A lot of the things that I hate about the UK would instantly go away if there were less people. The laid-back lifestyle that we adapted to in New Zealand is to a large extent a product of lower population. Even the city of Christchurch is so spread out and filled with parks and gardens that it has a really non-city feel to it. All this terrorism threat, fear-inducing news reporting and paranoia has turned the UK into a pretty miserable place really. It took a while but I stopped caring about the outside world while I was away and I liked it. After all, I’m just living my life and I’ll be damned if I’m going to live it in fear. It’s too short and precious. Hang on, maybe I’m not entirely over the post-holiday blues…

The end result of the holiday has been quite unexpected. I didn’t think I’d be re-evaluating where and how I’m going to spend the rest of my life. But I am. Watch this space.

Anyway, check out my New Zealand Photo Album. I know there are a lot of me but I didn’t want to blow other people’s anonymity here. I took dozens and these are just a snippet of them.

Ah yes, this is the life. The executive life. So we arrive at Manchester airport and there’s a huge queue to check in for Singapore Airlines. We start ambling towards the queue and this guy says “Singapore Air?” to which I reply yes. He points to the back of the queue and as cool as you like I say “we’re business class” and just like a 1980’s Martini advert suddenly we’re important and are immediately taken to the front of the line to the check in. Fantastic. We toddle off to the executive lounge to wait for the flight and for some breakfast.

We then get onto the plane before the rabble (turning left as we do) and I felt like I’d come home. When my girlfriend and I flew back from Antigua in the summer it was on a chartered flight with zero inches of legroom and we were praying the plane would crash and save us from our misery (we decided then and there to never fly economy long haul again - it helped us through the pain barrier). I’d already read about the flat-folding beds in Raffles class (as it’s called) so I knew what to expect but I was well impressed by just how much space we got. Not just the space in front but the seats are much wider than normal, and oh-so-comfy. With constant drinks, 4 course meal (and 3 course breakfast), being called by my name, and of course comfortable seats we arrived in Singapore 12.5 hours later feeling surprisingly fresh. It’s amazing just how much less it takes out of you flying properly.

Anyway, we fly to Christchurch tonight after 3 days here in Singapore and that should finish off the executive lifestyle. It’ll be back to basics, sleeping bags, tents, bed and breakfasts. Can’t wait. In the meantime have a look at some photos I’ve taken around Singapore that capture the essence of the place for me.