Pitching up at the apartment in Lviv - which I had rented for Ana and me to spend three days in over New Year - gave me an improbable sense of déjà vu. As we entered the cosy flat on vulytsya Fedorova I felt as though I was not stepping into the home of a rotund lady called Marianna, but of my imagined thirty-five year old self. It was clean, light, and decorated in a comfortable style that, subconsciously, I had aspired to wrapping myself in ever since being punched and kicked out of a Stalin-era ghetto the year before. My [View Full Entry]

---

---

Maybe it’s because I’m not a Londoner, that I love London so. I grew up in Sussex just an hour away from the capital, but the journey on the train was always so expensive that the only opportunities I had to experience life in the big city were when my parents would take me to watch sport. My Dad and I used to lose our voices singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at the Twickenham rugby 'Sevens' each spring, and bring fleeces and flasks to watch cricket at Lord's or the Oval every summer. My Mum took me to the Olympia horse [View Full Entry]

---

---

The best answer to why I haven't written anything since August is "I've just been too busy": when the law firm where I was working finalised a merger I found myself doing three jobs - translating, editing and proofreading - for two companies. I worked late most nights before going straight home to bed. It was a stressful autumn, but there were good moments: sipping hot chocolate with Ana on Saturday evenings in the Shokoladnitsa café on vulytsya Chervonoarmiyska; finding a homeless puppy at the entrance to our building one Friday night and taking care of it for a few days; [View Full Entry]

---

---

I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time - it's more a case of me having lost my mojo, now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunch-hour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination. Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise; I still have my notes, and some of them even make sense. The Hungarian word for 'flowers', virag - written on florists' windows across Budapest - sounds like the Russian word for [View Full Entry]

---

---

I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time - it's more a case of me having lost my mojo, now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunch-hour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination. Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise; I still have my notes, and some of them even make sense. Below is the beginning of a story I wrote about my journey from Hungary to Ukraine: [i [View Full Entry]

---

---

I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time - it's more a case of me having lost my mojo, now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunch-hour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination. Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise; I still have my notes, and some of them even make sense. Below is the beginning of a story I wrote about my journey from Hungary to Ukraine: "An hour [View Full Entry]

---

---