Why gardening mirrors your life

I spent a couple of hours gardening this afternoon and – at the end of a major weeding, pruning and watering session – it struck me how a garden is much like a body.

Bear with me – I know it sounds a bit far-fetched…

We all have a tendency over winter months to let ourselves go.

Bad habits creep in, we eat comfort food, and we don’t think about doing the best for ourselves.

As spring approaches, and the weather improves, something changes.

New thoughts and ideas flourish and blossom and it suddenly seems a good time to jettison the habits that are holding you back.

Are you beginning to see the metaphor here?
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Sahara Trek 2019: Reflections on the trip of a lifetime

Four days. 100km. One large, hot desert. 17 remarkable people.

Those are the numbers that tell just one part of the Sahara Trek I’ve just returned from, on behalf of The Brain Tumour Charity.

It’s difficult to do justice to such a once-in-a-lifetime trip in one blog post, but I’m going to try by breaking up the experience into sections…

The country

Morocco to many people is Marrakesh or Casablanca: all souks, kasbahs, bazaars and tagines. It is, of course, so much more.

All the people I met were warm and friendly, and accepting of Europeans.

The country is almost exclusively Muslim – and thus quite conservative – with Arabic and Berber the most widely-spoken languages, although I got by comfortably in French.
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The most important book you’ll read this year

Many of you will have heard of Hans Rosling. He was an eminent Swedish public health physician and lecturer who came to public attention through a number of TED talks he gave, explaining how little most of us (in the Western world, anyway) really know about the world.

Sadly, Rosling died in February 2017, but his legacy lives on in his book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World, co-written with his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna.

As a book, its aim is very simple. To explain why the world is in a better place than you think and to emphasise that most of what you know is wrong. Rosling achieves this by asking a series of multiple-choice questions, most of which you fail miserably on. Continue reading “The most important book you’ll read this year”