• Coming into the valley of Pollenca from the mountains above Soller. The village of Orient. (Mallorca)
• The high valley and pass over the mountain from La Thuille to Entreves (Italy)
• The estuary and path leading out from Machynlleth (Wales)
• The never rediscovered streams and valleys leading up the Yorksire dales from when I was a boy with Tom Davidson (England)
• The amber and purple cloudscapes on the west tip of a Maldive island (Maldives)
• The hill fortress perched on the eastern heights of the hills beyond Udaipur (India)
• The unfrozen turquoise rivers gushing down the Tatra mountains (Slovakia)
• Splitting watermelon on the steps beneath the walls of Istanbul (Turkey)
• Mouth Mill beach and window rock (Devon)
• Humayan's tomb (Delhi)

• Chances of being killed in the United States (over a four year period):
  • Timbercutter (most lethal legal job): 1 in 200
  • Death Row: 1 in 20
  • Drug-dealer ('foot-soldier' earns below minimum wage): 1 in 4
  • Unborn Fetus: 1 in 3.25 (37mn abortions since 1980 legalization. 6mn jews killed in holocaust)
• 50% IQ is Genetic. 20% IQ develops in the womb. 4 weeks after conception fetus has a recognisable brain.
• Children laugh 300 times a day, Adults 50 times. No data on crying.
• Human brains double in size in first five years. Monkey brains barely grow in this time. After this there is continual growth in the connections between neurons. We have 100bn neurons, 1,000trn synapses. B...

• The Asian consumer boom will have led to a reborn East that, led by India, hungrily rediscovers its past and develops a thriving modern culture and civilization.
• China will have recovered from the ravages of war and developed a healthy, decentralised but ageing democracy. It's South American and African allies will have risen with it.
• America's natural splendour will have turned it into a tourist destination that will help prop up an economy still weak from over-expansion, debt, war and brain drain. Emigration levels will have stabilised.
• Her European allies will have suffered the worst effects of self-imposed protectionism and war. Were it not for Germany and Turkey it would have slipped into third world status.

• What did the shy pebble say? I wish i was a little boulder
• What do you get if you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic? About halfway
• Man who drank a lot and told by his wife that if he ever came home drunk again she'd leave him. Went to the pub, drank a lot and threw up all over himself. Told his friend 'If i come home like this my wife will leave me'. Friend says not to worry, put this £20 note in your jacket pocket and say someone else threw up all over you and gave note for dry cleaning. Came back home and confronted by his wife he said 'no, no, no, another man threw up all over me, gave me £20 for the cleaning bill' She said 'Why have you got two £20 notes in your hand' He said 'Oh the other one is from the man who shat in my pants'.

• drugs - should be legalised
• immigration - should be entirely legal
• monopolies - see Mexico
• common agricultural policy - see Africa
• protectionism - see WW2 and 3 (coming to a cinema near you)

• Married Helen
• Moved into flat together disgorging bedclothes, books and laundry. Rattled by winds at night, a warm cabin in the storm
• Watched, in awe, the entirety of The Wire together as TV grew into maturity
• Visited Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Jakarta and Bangkok and learned that Asian cities have no beauty but many kind and hopeful people
• ...especially the Thais who trapped me on the beach for an extra week whilst they peacefully deposed the government
• Formed adulterous relationship with iphone. I don't even know her name
• Bought a scooter and won the freedom of London, shooting through summer streets with Helen on the back
• Discovered I don't care about money as much as i thought with redundancy in sight
• Bought and decorated our first Christmas ...

Own

• The fabric of the cosmos (Greene)
• Modern Philosophy (Scruton)
• King Warrior Magician Lover
• Empire (Ferguson)

Want

• ID: The quest for meaning in the C21st (Greenfield)
• Leviathan (Hobbes)
• The Social Contract (Rousseau)
• On Liberty (Mills)
• The King never smiles (Handley)
• The Ascent of Money (Ferguson)
• A good history of India/China
• A History of the Countryside (Arthur Rackham)

• Transmission (Joy Division)
• Let Down (Radiohead)
• Unison (Bjork)
• Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan)
• Tonight we fly (Divine Comedy)
• Heavenly Peach Banquet (Monkey)
• Travellin' Riverside blues (Led Zeppelin)
• Say Aha (Santogold)
• Whipsnade (Suede)
• Kill all hippies (Primal Scream)

2008

• L'Entrecote Palais de Venise (****)
• Corrigans (**)
• Notting Hill Brasserie (****)
• Negozia Classica (***)
• Quirinale (****)

2009

• Hereford Road (***) - Delicious sweetbreads, excellent sea bream with artichoke.
• Essenza (***)
• Assaggi (***) - lasagna/venison gnocchi, john dory/lamb

Wishlist:

• Al Moro (Rome)
• Cul de Sac (Rome)
• Chapeau Rouge (Dijon)

2007

• On the Genealogy of morals - Friedrich Nietzsche (***)
• The Inheritors - William Golding (****)
• The Revenge of Gaia - James Lovelock (***)
• Underworld - Don DeLillo (***)
• The Spire - William Golding (**)
• Chronicles - Bob Dylan (***)

2008

• The Road - Cormac McCarthy (***)
• A Bit of a Blur - Alex James (***)
• McMafia - Misha Glenny (****)
• What does China think - Mark Leonard (**)
• Maximum City - Suketu Mehta (***)
• Remainder -Tom McCarthy (****)
• A Dance to the Music of Time: Books 1-3 (***)
• A Very Private Life - Michal Frayn (****)...

2008

• Hot Fuzz (****)
• Cold Comfort Farm (****)

2009

• Vicky Cristina Barcelona (****)
• Man on Wire (***)
• The Class (***)
• Trans-siberian (***)
• Annie Hall (***)
• Long Good Friday (***)
• Blue Velvet (**)
• The Seventh Seal (****)
• Naked (****)
• How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (**)
• Crimes and Misdemeanours (****)
• Shady (***)
• In the Loop (**)
• Encounters at the end of the world (***)
• The Band's Visit (***)

2009

• Incarnation - Bill Viola (*****)
• Picaso; challenging the past - National Gallery (***)

Indian English

• Pindrop silence
• Key bunch
• 'A gleam in the eye and a fire in the belly'
• Time-pass (killing time)
• Fundas - ('she knows her funda(mental)s')
• Fundu - wonderful/brilliant

Neuroscience

• Neuronal constellations
• Action potential
• Hyper Polarized

Banker-eese

Vocations

• Funambulist - tight rope walker
• Campanologist - church bell ringer
• Tintinabulator - hand bell ringer

Gothic (Old/Middle English)

• I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's

(William Blake)

• It requires a very unusual mind to make an analysis of the obvious

(Alfred Whitehead)

• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know

(Earnest Hemingway)

• Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything

(Robert Rubin)

• I know that I know nothing

(Socrates)

• I would have written you a short letter but i didn't have time

In the right corner...

• Roger Scruton
• Baroness Susan Greenfield
• Peter Hitchens

And in the left...

• Steven Levitt
• Tom McCarthy

• Russia
• Georgia
• Ukraine
• Maldives
• Mauritius
• Western Europe
• Poland
• Czech rep
• Slovakia
• Hungary
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Turkey
• Brazil
• Chile
• Colombia
• Mexico
• Tobago
• China
• India
• Indonesia

• Write a list
• Dont think more than half an hour ahead
• Build a blazing fire. Sit in front of it.
• Play Bach on the guitar
• Take a walk in an unfamiliar city
• Play squash or exercise
• Listen to a podcast full of experts in their field
• Spend time with my wife
• Discover new music
• Sketch fictions
• Read escapist stylists (Georgette Heyer/PG Wodehouse)
• Drink a perfectly cold pint of Stella

• Mells, Somerset (born here and i'll die here)
• Peckham, London
• Marlow, Buckinghamshire
• Moscow, Russia
• Twickenham, London
• Ampleforth, Yorkshire (school)
• Kiev, Ukraine
• St Andrews, Scotland (uni)
• London (The Oval/Queens Park/Marylebone/Bayswater/Notting Hill)

White

• Quincey
• Casa Zuliani winter

Red

• Barollo

Reportage

• China's pollution

Criticism

• George Eliot and the victorians
• Urban vs Rural writers
• Desecration and the fear of beauty

Comment

• Too big to succeed...
• ...and the truth of neoliberalism
• You're born clever, it's harder to becom...
• How Cameron finally won my vote
• Why wikipedia works
• The peaceful world we live in now

• Rock 'n Roll - Tom Stoppard (Duke of York 11/07)
• Monkey goes to the west - Albarn/Hewitt (Dome 11/08)
• La Clique (Hippodrome 12/08)

Mountains:

• Peru (Corillera, Huay Huash)
• Patagonia
• Bhutan
• New Zealand
• Ethiopia (Simien Mountains)
• Slovenia (Julian Alps)

Plains:

• Treking in Mongolia
• Treking in Peru
• Antarctica
• The Stans/new silk route

Britain:

• Hawnby Moor (North York Moors)
• Gesail (Snowdonia)
• Yorkshire Dales

• As I walked out one evening - WH Auden

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead

• Burnt Norton - TS Eliot

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle tree

• East Coker - TS Eliot

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

Novel

• The best way to think inside other people's heads

Poetry

• The closest you can come to speaking your own language. We understand poetry not with our thin crust of conciousness and reason but the huge underbelly of senses that keep us breathing, moving and aware.

Ballet

• Dance is the hidden language of the soul, the body says what words cannot

Music

• After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music

• Kill all hippies - primal scream
• Electioneering - radiohead
• Transmission - joy division
• Sympathy for the devil - rolling stones
• Song 2 - Blur
• Accelerator - primal scream
• Long snake moan - pj harvey

• Middlemarch - George Eliot
• Darkness Visible - William Golding
• Tom Jones - Henry Fielding
• Remainder - Tom McCarthy
• Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
• Four Quartets - TS Eliot
• The Good Soldier - Ford Maddox Ford
• The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad

• Radiohead (Victoria Park. w H, James P, Greg) 7/8/08
• Parsifal (in Bayreuth. w Alex.) 28/8/08
• Santogold (Koko, Camden. w H.) 3/9/08
• Mozart piano no 24, Shostakovitch no 4 (Proms. w H, Kathleen, John, Sarah, Nick, black albino artist) 10/9/08
• Monkey goes to the West (Dome. w H) 11/08
• La Clique (Hippodrome. w H) 20/12/08

• Bon iver
• The Genuine Basement Tapes (Dylan)
• Joanna Newson (harp folk singer, recommended by Jack)
• Boris Godunov
• Hilary Haan violin partite (Bach)

• Quirinale (London)
• Notting Hill Brasserie (London)
• Boudin Blanc (London) - social
• Negozia Classica (London)
• L'Entrecote (London) - social
• Antiche Carampane (Venice)
• Hotel Auberge Relais de la Signora (Calvi)
• Casa Musicale (Pigna)