Livvi

“Make sure the prawns are ready, Santa’s almost here!” Perspiration clung to the foreheads of the staff as they busied themselves with adjusting table decorations. This year, I had been relieved of the pressure of Christmas at home and, for, two weeks, whilst on a once-in-a-life-time-never-to-be-repeated-for-fear-of-being-disowed-by-the-family holiday, that pressure had been consigned to someone else. The waiters re-adjusted their bow-ties as the manager announced (just a little too eagerly) to a crowded beach “Santa’s here!” Mauritius is a tropical island and I had quickly learnt that ‘tropical’ translates to ‘it will rain a lot’. After eight days of persistent rain storms and with the long-awaited arrival of clear-blue skies, the residents of Flic-en-Flac beach (myself included) were more than a little reluctant to stir from ... read more

The taxi door was held shut with Sellotape and bumper stickers. A string of brightly coloured beads hung from the rear-view mirror, bouncing frenetically in response to the many bumps and potholes that littered Fez’s side streets. As a typical student, I was desperate to ‘see the world’; find somewhere untouched by tourism and all manner of other clichés easily recognizable in an early twenty-something. For me, it became about the ‘Coca Cola Test’; it’s a relatively well known fact that, even in the most remote countries in the most obscure and rarely frequented parts of the world, it’s almost always possible to buy a Coke. Whether this is from a languid street vendor, sitting beneath a parasol beside a dusty road or served in an iced glass inside an air-conditioned, Westernized shopping palace, Coke is ... read more