Bold tracks and Bagpacks

  If a stranger stood in front of my bookshelf for ten minutes, they would know me better than my CV ever could. A CV lists what you have done. A shelf shows what you keep coming back to: the questions you can't put down. So I stood back and read my own spines the way a stranger would. First, a word of thanks. These shelves owe a great deal to my a friend of the hills, Mr. Frank, who generously donated books from his wonderful library. Here is what the shelf says about me, whether I like it or not. Thread one: how the money machine breaks The loudest thread on my shelf is money. Not how to make it, but how it goes wrong. Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan argues that the events that change everything are the ones nobody saw coming, and that we only explain them neatly afterwards. Beside it sits Den of Thieves , James B. Stewart's account of the 1980s Wall Street insider-trading scandals. Then Bust , on Greece, the euro and the sovereign debt crisis. Michael Lewis appears three ...

  Five Days, One Bed and a Very Loud Wind For the first time in my adult life, I have spent five whole days at home, mostly in bed. Not a sick day where you still reply to emails. Five real days, with two more to go before my first review with the doc. Adulthood, I have discovered, is a simple game. Wake up, leave, come back. Repeat until December, then survive the long January. Outside, the wind has been howling like it has a personal grudge against our roof. I am not a meteorologist, so I have been doing what every Kenyan does when the weather misbehaves. been blaming El Niño. It is strong, yet strangely soothing. My only prayer is that it is carrying blessings. And healing. Mostly healing. A few months ago, It was prescribed, need do a corrective laser eye surgery. Through every test and every booking, I was sure. I have a job that allows me leave days to recover, and a spirit that is a little too fond of risky things. Ecclesiastes says that to every thing there is a season. App...