“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow that house down….” As a man with two small kids, I think a lot about the big bad wolf – he and his cronies crop up a lot in the bedtime stories I’ve been reading every night for the last decade. Sometimes I’m surprised at how much […]
It’s no secret that France, and to be more precise Provence, and to be even more exact Les Alpilles offer some of the prettiest landscapes in Europe. And while they’re fine enough from ground level, they’re even better if you’re a bird – or in this case a drone – expertly piloted by our France […]
Meredith is back from a few weeks on research in Italy, with tales of a missed flight, loose knees, and pure flexibility. The world has changed, and we with it – the tempo is different, and in this makeshift podcast we try to capture a feeling, that thing we all chase when we leave our […]
I’ve just returned from an archipelago off the coast of Panama where a massive, privately-funded conservation endeavour is now being shared with the outside world via a top-tier hospitality project. And I can’t say enough good things about it. Genuine hospitality can be the perfect vehicle for the expression and transmission of culture. However, resort […]
Yvonne recently returned from a research trip in Kenya, where she put her camera through its paces. We asked her to whittle down the several thousand photos she took to a few favourites, selected above. It seems she spent much of her time gazing into the eyes of various wild beasts… when she wasn’t marvelling […]
“They’re feckin’ crazy for it, the whole island, two years ago you would find no one out there, now, twice a day, heaps of em.” – Pat of Inis Meain. During the various covid lockdowns in Ireland a trend took hold, and something elemental and primal came to the surface in this island country: the […]
I used to watch this man construct a handmade parasol in Myanmar. He was on a long drive from the airport in Heho to Inle Lake in the hill country of the Shan state. He would make the most intricate workings, all out of bamboo and a home smelted blade and lathe, he would perform […]
The Post Office Essays There is a particular magic we humans get to do. We can have an idea then translate it into a series of symbols which others, years later, can read, so that the idea enters into their mind. We can write and create books and essays and letters, and mark down our […]
This episode of WPIG the Pig prattles on about Sea Shanties. Those foot stomping songs that feel like the pulsing waves of a tide coming in. But not just that, sticking with the water theme, we talk of rivers and bayous to boot. And hell, really any song that makes you want to run off […]
We thought we were getting the Information Age but we stumbled blindly into the Misinformation Age. How did this happen? I can’t answer that question, but I can tell you that it’s NOT because there was too much high quality independent journalism out there. Which is why Trufflepig will be supporting The Narwhal as part […]
The Post Office Essays There is a particular magic we humans get to do. We can have an idea then translate it into a series of symbols which others, years later, can read, so that the idea enters into their mind. We can write and create books and essays and letters, and mark down our […]
I pull the car to a screeching halt, and hop out to take in this moment. After an hour or so of fairly uneventful driving from Valencia heading north, the landscapes begin to reveal the first of many medieval hilltop villages and I capture a few shots with my camera before continuing on. A short […]
It’s a rather obvious point to make, but the last 2 years have been a bit shitty. As we sat hunkered down at home for months on end watching the news, it was as if the sense of physical and mental oppression caused by Covid was being exacerbated by the relentless fire-hose of human-caused catastrophe […]
With the advent of the digital era, many bemoaned the disappearance of books as physical objects and pointed to the dangers connected with such a possibility, for it might change the way we think. So, these days, when a book becomes a literary case, that’s already cause for celebration. If that book is an art […]
There is a morning each year when the winter starts to shift gears out of the cold and the barometric pressure starts to change: birds begin singing, and if you look closely, buds start to form on the end of the branches. It is the rebirth, the beginning, and after a two-year winter it is […]
Arabic is spoken by about half a billion people around the world and is the language of the Islamic religion – from Jakharta to Casablanca, the reading of the Qu’ran and prayers are in Arabic. Muslims revere the Qu’ran as the literal word of God as recited to the Prophet Muhammad, so the written book […]