Citizen, remain vigilant 

The terrorist threat level in the United Kingdom has recently been raised to Severe, meaning that there is high likelihood of a terrorist attack in the immediate future. Since the British Government initiated the launch of air missions against the Islamic State in Syria, living in London feels a lot like living in the centre…

Thessaloniki Street Art

//criticaldispatches.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/thessaloniki.jpg The last week has been spent eating, drinking and sleeping on holiday in the Northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. Held up in traffic while on a drive through the city’s main commercial district, we caught shot of this fantastic mural and I was able to take a quick picture before the light turned green…

Scoping out the West

The search for our first place continues, and on a fine August Saturday afternoon it took Herself and I to Chiswick in West London. We had arranged to view a neat little one bedroom flat above a restaurant on the High Road and we’re excited about a change of scenery. We set on the idea of getting…

A Long Walk Through The City

Soon we found ourselves in Bloomsbury where around every corner you half expect to find T.S Eliot or Virginia Woolf stood in discussion with one of their literary acquaintances from that little bourgeois social circle of theirs. When Americans see London in their movies, says my old man, this is the London they are seeing.

A Weekend in Greece

If you ever happen to find yourself spending some of your very important and hard-earned vacation time in Thessaloniki, the capital of Greek Macedonia and the country’s second largest city by population, there are a number of details to which you will become privy about Greek culture that will forever change how you perceive this Southern European Republic and…

A Quick and Silly One

I spotted this sign whilst taking a break in Greece. I can’t help imagining that it is actually warning: “Please don’t chop up your own arm and then throw the pieces down the toilet,” or even: “Beware, death-ray currently in operation in the bathroom!” Do any of you have any captions that could be added?

Blessed are the forgetful

“There is no teaching, but only recollection”  – Socrates Last year I saw a stand-up comedian who, after riffing for 10 minutes on his recent travels across the United States, concluded his set (which was admittedly quite low on laughs) by idiomatically declaring to the half-cut Friday night audience that “when you experience different cultures,…

Don’t Grow Up

For the past few weeks, the weather in London has been –  what the Irish would describe as – “desperate.” Making my way to the work, a few soggy mornings ago, I caught glance of this shop front and despite the soaked and depressing concrete grays of the city at this time of year, it…

A Death in Morocco

Abraham’s son had drowned in a nearby river that morning. The boy, we would be later told, was 7 years old. The body washed to shore about a mile downstream from where he had been last seen playing with friends. A sharp undercurrent had caught him and he was unable to swim. None of the…