Something that no one needs to know, but I've put it up anyway because I'm sadistic. So There.

If there is one male character from literature I could be, apart from Gandalf and Bertie Wooster and, in a roundabout way, Captain Haddock, I’d be Robert Kincaid from The Bridges of Madison County.

I know, he’s fifty-two when he finds the love of his life, who is already married, and then can’t be with her. He then goes away nobly and dies. He cries (only a little) in parts. He is rather good-looking and has grey hair. In short, he isn’t me.

But he spends his childhood writing down names of places on pieces of paper and tacks them to his walls along with picture postcards. Something I’ve done. And he hopes beyond hope that he’ll get to see those places someday. Something I do. Of course, I curse airfares and passports into the bargain, but let's overlook that.

He is a photographer who likes W.B.Yeats. I obsess about being able to photograph. And - gulp - I like Yeats.

He also works with National Geographic. He gets paid to travel all over the world, photograph things and write a little about them. I think I could deal with that.

When you can have a job like that, who needs unrequited love?


Iceland. A landscape exploding in fire and ice, and the first on my Robert Kincaid list. Don't worry, I'll get there all right.