by Malcolm Pryce | May 12, 2021 | Me being a berk, Obscure Wisdom, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing
The big wooden door of Santa Maria della Scala hospital creaked open. The Blessed Saint Bernadine of Siena peered through the gap. ‘Yes?’ he said, inspecting me through rheum-filled eyes. ‘I’ve come about the job.’ ‘Job?’ ‘The Corpse-washer.’ I held up the...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Advertising, Me being a berk, Travel, Writing
It was around the end of the last century that I embarked on my journey to the East in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. I had been told I should present myself at the gates of a Zen monastery in Japan and there prostrate myself. The monks, they said, would then...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Me being a berk, Obscure Wisdom, Travel
So I did it. He really would have preferred me not to go out at night at all. Or during the day, for that matter. But blessed with the immortality (stupidity) of youth I insisted. So he said, on no account should I hail a cab in the street. Safest would be to order...
by Malcolm Pryce | Feb 4, 2021 | Me being a berk, Travel
I met Leah on the floating bar in the bay of Puerta Gallera, a hundred or so miles south of Manila. She was crying and told me that she was missing her boyfriend from the Netherlands who would be sending her an air ticket. From the way she said it we both knew somehow...
by Malcolm Pryce | Jan 31, 2021 | Travel
It was off the island of Niuatoputapu in Tonga that I discovered my Captain Bligh Quotient. (CBQ.) What is that, you ask? Your CBQ is the amount of time you can spend in a small boat with two people sailing across the South Pacific before your crew mates want to...
by Malcolm Pryce | Jan 30, 2021 | Travel
In the past, whenever I travelled to a new country, I had a special technique for working out what sort of country it was going to be. On the day I arrived I would go to the Post Office and buy an envelope. Then I licked the flap, stuck it down and waited for five...
