A month to go

So, with a month and a day to go till we fly off to Auckland, the Rory Peck Trust’s page is now live, encouraging their supporters to chip in and sponsor our madcap 2000-mile tandem adventure to and through New Zealand. With warm thanks to so many of you all, Jutta and I are already nearly … Read more …

Tour Aotearea – 3000km the length of New Zealand, Feb/March 2015

Nearly 40 years after receiving our first tandem for our wedding in March 1977, we’re taking our heavyweight long-distance tourer Daisy2 to NZ/Aotearoa to cycle from Cape Reinga at the top of North Island to Bluff at the bottom of South Island. We’re raising funds for the wonderful Rory Peck Trust, uniquely dedicated as it says … Read more …

Tianjin Ladies and a severed head

A good 20 years ago now, a clumsy au pair in London dropped the detachable head of our elegant Tianjin clay figurine lady, and her face smashed into unattractive pieces. Now, after her owners’ own marital journey of breakage and reconstruction, our Lady of Tianjin has finally been returned to amazing beauty by the National … Read more …

The BBC Past

1980: My favourite radio moment, during a recording of a despatch from Berlin just after our son Christopher was born in 1980. Keep listening – the tape was kept by my London colleagues who fell about, I gather. 1984: Just for fun, report recorded and broadcast in Hungarian on the position of ethnic Romanians in … Read more …

New Psychlotherapist blog settings…

PA psychotherapy client asked me the other day, “Why, Mark, do you blog? What a strange thing to do.” It was a very appropriate challenge, and it made me think. And indeed, I thought so much that I’m changing the public visibility of this blog in a way that allows – for the time being … Read more …

If we’re f**ked on the climate, what can we do?

Those who visit this blog know how concerned I am about climate change, and the psychology of human denial of the urgency of approaching catastrophe. Our 32-year-old son Alastair is now on a kind of retreat in Peru, where we as parents were ourselves recently doing much the same – and where, as picture illustrates, … Read more …

On Anglo-German Reunification and Reconciliation

A hundred years from the start of World War One, I’ve finally found the peg I’ve been seeking on which to hang my first Braynework blog post in nearly a year. It’s been the most extraordinary year, in which I left Cirencester and my former partner Sue, sold the beloved Wychcroft home which we bought in 2003, moved … Read more …

What Happened to the Revolution – Romania 1991

Covering the Romanian Revolution in December 1989 was thrilling, terrifying and personally a life-changing experience. I’ll add pictures and some more narrative in due course, but here’s a long radio documentary I compiled and broadcast on the BBC World Service just over a year after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu, with the incomparable production support … Read more …

Brompton folding bike in New York snow mercy wine-dash

Wonderful fellow-Brompton-folding-bike-owner’s email today from my old Dart Centre friend and colleague in snowed-in New York Bruce Shapiro. “Mark – I have one more reason to be grateful for your introducing me to Brompton bikes all those years ago: As you probably know we were hit by a blizzard overnight. I am hunkered down at home … Read more …