Since I have just spent two or so weeks in Brooklyn, it is fitting that when I arrived home to London a copy of Betty Smith’s classic novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was waiting on my doorstep. It was a BookCrossing copy, and had come to me from the US via Canada and the [...]

In the battle of Caitlin versus the weather, the London winter has been winning. I don’t have the winter blues but I have been finding it very hard to exercise. I prefer to exercise outside and in summer I happily skate and run to stay fit and have fun as well. In winter, well, less [...]

I’m in the New York Times! There are few outlets for a journalist more prestigious than this but I can’t lean back and say I’ve made it because sadly I’m not in it as a journalist. I’m in it as an average Jo Citizen (if that’s possible without actually being a US citizen).
The travel section [...]

This weekend I did a two-day slalom workshop with Naomi Grigg. I’ve never done slalom before so while the others were learning new cone dodging tricks like the Sun, the Marbrook and the Crazy, I was doing more basic stuff. First I mastered forward criss-cross, then I started working on backwards criss-cross, and I also [...]

Last night was the birthday celebration for Andrew (hubby of Jess). We kicked off the festivities with bowling at Queensway. The last time I went bowling was about a month ago at the Media Guardian Christmas party. I managed to disgrace myself with a series of gutter balls and a total score about 32. This [...]

Pantomime is a Christmas tradition in Britain. It involves retelling well-known stories - such as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Puss in Boots - and lots of cross-dressing and bawdy humour. The humour usually works on two levels - slapstick humour for the kiddies and knowing innuendo for their parents. Sometimes the adult jokes [...]

Before Christmas, my boyfriend and I went to Washington DC for a few days for a mini-break. We caught the train from Penn Station, which is a nice way to travel, but also slightly frustrating because the Americans buy expensive high-speed tilt trains from the Europeans and then hobble them so they don’t tilt in [...]

An American soldier in the Iraq war wrote a blog post to be published in the event of his death. It makes interesting reading.
Update: This went down but seems to be back up again now. If it goes down again, you could try searching for ‘Andrew Olmsted’ in a search engine and clicking on the [...]

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…
Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
Our [...]

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…
Eleven pipers piping, ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
As I stood on [...]