Blogging!

Hello there, my first blog and hopefully not my last. Well, what am I going to blog about, what pearls of wisdom do I think it is worth my effort writing and the effort of other bloggers to bother reading. Sorry about the photo by the way, my work Webpage photo, functional and unflattering but not sure if I can take a flattering one of me!

My list of links might provide a clue to my passions in life. My wife, my work, my science fiction and my sport; very probably in that order. I am one of those really annoying, lucky souls whose enjoys their work (well most of it anyway, obviously not the admin. stuff that if you left for a month or two no-one would ever notice it hadn't been done). No, it’s the research and teaching bits of my job as a lecturer in Geography that I love. I will be commenting on bits and pieces of that as I think of them as I really do believe geography gives you a particular, probably oddly skewed view of the world. For the really keen I have a separate blog on Environmental Geography that they can link to
(http://environmentalgeographyblog.blogspot.com/). On my personal site I will be more politically bias than on my environmental geography site as I do have some views on the way governments of all persuasions in the UK have and are creating a more unequal world.

Luckily, my work also means that I get to travel a fair bit as well and experience a lot of different cultures and climates and indulge a little in photographing of these landscapes and places. So not only a chance to wax lyrical about the wonders of travel, but also a chance to highlight and comment on some of the tragic inequalities of humanity.

My sport used to be hockey and cricket but I gracefully bowed out, albeit with a hope to return when I’m older to plague the young. Now I run occasionally and have completed the Reading half-marathon and Great south Run both at a sedate pace (it is always embarrassing to be beaten by the foam rhino!)

As for the science fiction – well everyone has a little guilty pleasure and that is one of mine. I have even tried my hand at writing something in the genre and continue to do so. Apart from escapism and enjoyment of a good story I think it is interesting to look at the context and development of the ideas as well as the production of the science fiction itself (oh dear, is that my geographic viewpoint coming through). So I’ll be blogging on what I think of certain pieces of science fiction but, I hope, with a slightly different critical slant from most.

Anyway it is for others to judge if what I say is interesting or not. I must think it is or I wouldn’t bother to write about it!