The Journey Begins

"1 Bedroom Flat to Rent in Hammersmith, West London" And with that, posted on the internet for the world to see, it suddenly feels very official. To most people, Georgie and I have only recently made the choice to uproot our lives and to go and live in West Africa, in a small town called …

When Georgie met the Queen

It was a long drive to London with a new baby in the back seat. Before we set off I had rigged up some fairy lights around the headrests to distract her. That worked fine until we were stuck in traffic, 13 miles of roadworks on the M6. She liked that even less than we did. …

Most Bloomin’ Excellent

We didn’t believe it until we saw it in the papers, that’s why it wasn’t too hard to keep it a secret. For over a month we asked ourselves - is it really true? Was it a hoax? Maybe the letter got lost in the post? Because when they first wrote to Georgie, they gave …

We found a way to make Georgie come home

“Well, now you have to come home,” I said, and I’m glad to tell you that she said, “Yes.” Georgie arrived back in the UK on the 6th of April, finally bringing to a close over two years of work in some of the world’s toughest spots. She had spent a total of 18 months in …

The Great Spanish Experiment

A quick update, and some photos of our recent adventures. I've tried something a little bit different, which I was hoping to be able to show you here, but I'm afraid, due to the limitations of the site, I'll have to ask you to make a click on this link which will take you to …

The Golden Door: On refugees, time travel and doing what’s right.

This poem, by Emma Lazarus, is engraved inside the Statue of Liberty.   Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. …

Celebrations in Sierra Leone

Georgie's just shared this video with me. Love it. Needs no commentary.

For Sierra Leone, Ebola done done.

After almost two years, 14,000 cases and nearly 4000 deaths, Sierra Leone finally has an Ebola story worth celebrating. What a lot of time I’ve spent talking about this horrible disease on this blog. The first time I referred to the outbreak, pretty casually, was here in June of 2014. In fact, I was very …

First thoughts from Georgie in Turkey

This time last year I was in Freetown with Ebola all around. I was checking the news, texts, Whatsapp, Internet, radio every minute just to watch as the number of people with Ebola rose. I was driving up and down between Freetown and Lunsar as we slowly built the Ebola treatment centre and on the …

Mountains beyond mountains – Georgie heads East

We were drinking ale and reading the Sunday papers and when we left the pub it was raining. We didn’t really know what to do with our last day together. After spending most of the first year of our marriage apart we had now grown accustomed, over the last three months, to being together again. …

Postcard from Barcelona

We live only half an hour from Valencia and yet we managed to visit Barcelona first despite it being four hours away on the train. It was all in a good cause, though, to throw our support behind Roger who was competing in his first (only?) Iron Man competition last week. He finished in an …