URSABLOG: Champagne Trades
I have to confess if I have one guilty pleasure it is Champagne. I love the taste and the smell, the bubbly effervescence as it tickles the nose and the back of the throat, the lig
URSABLOG: Caught By A Shower of Passing Spray
I’ve just got in from London having attended the Marine Money Ship Finance Forum. This particular event doesn’t usually feature in my professional calendar, but I had been invi
URSABLOG: Grammar School
It’s probably not the greatest way to start the day, but like many people I use my mobile phone as an alarm clock, and as soon as it goes off I see the texts and news updates rec
URSABLOG: Time Please
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day. Time is short, so shouldn’t I be making more of it? As I get o
URSABLOG: Let Me Live In Your Heart. A Short Story.
The following story is fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. I was eating breakfast when I noticed a man peering at me over his silver coffee p
URSABLOG: Multiple Entry Visa
Sleepless In Shanghai Jetlag and nicotine addiction drove me out of my hotel room and onto the street in the middle of the night. It was a small hotel on the fifth and eighteenth f
URSABLOG: Peak Wavelength
It’s hard to imagine the sea’s destructive potential on a calm day: it is peaceful, benign, infinite. But watching relentless oceanic swell – or experiencing it on board
URSABLOG: I Don’t Know
In the run up to exam season at the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers, I became alarmed at the number of practice essays written by students that were similar to each other, even
URSABLOG: Spaced Out
“How was your stay with us, sir?” “Very nice, thank you.” “Everything ok with your room?” “Yes, but it was massive. You could have fitted families in there. There was
URSABLOG: Gilded Cages
About fifteen years ago, in Nanjing, I was in a taxi and in genuine fear of my life. I was being taken to the airport by someone who had obviously been taught to drive on an Atari