CURRENT MISSION

Becoming self sufficient...

ABOUT ME

I was born in Canada but grew up in the rural West country of England, an area I love dearly.

I trained as a chef and worked all around the West country, including at River Cottage with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. After around 5 years of busting my nuts through 90 hour weeks for not much more than minimum wage, I suddenly had a thought, it was - "f*ck this". So I went to Japan to write a book and generally eat, drink and be merry. I now work as a broke but much happier writer. You can read my monthly food/gardening column in the Mendip Times here - www.mendiptimes.co.uk

I have recently bought a timber house in Sweden, where I hope to move in 2016.

Spare time left over after working and eating is usually spent reading, cultivating various strange organisms on petri dishes, planning future trips, gardening, or placating my platonic life-partner and incessant tormentor, Darwin (a Hahn's macaw).

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I surfed around Japan for 2 1/2 months in 2007 - I met some marvellous people and went to some marvellous places thanks to CS. I've since also surfed in Denmark, Poland and Sweden, as well as hosted a few people which has been great fun. I love it!

Interests

I have a very large, random, disorderly band of hobbies and interests, which include bushcraft, anthropology, mycology, building eco-homes, gardening, evolution (and science in general) and fishing. My great loves in life are food, science and the English language. Oh and my parrot.

I love hunting and cultivating fungi, and my business (chaosfungorum.co.uk) is based on this.

• writing
• books
• beauty
• dining
• cooking
• drinking
• gardening
• reading
• fishing
• hunting
• anthropology
• business
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

Music - Coldplay, The Ting Tings, Jack Johnson, Woody Guthrie, The Beatles, Sigur Ros, Bob Marley, David Gray, Gurrumul Yunupingu, Alison Krauss, Ray Charles

Films - American Beauty, Lost in Translation, Jurassic Park, Burma VJ, Into the Wild (who doesn't), god knows how many others

Books - The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), Looking for the lost (Alan Booth), A short history of nearly everything (Bill Bryson), Notes from a small island (Bill Bryson), 1984, Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe), any of the Wallander series.

Book-wise I love pretty much anything Dickensian, Dawkinsian, Darwinian, Boothian, Mankellian or Brysonian, and anything by Lafcadio Hearn. (Hearnian sounded too much like an unpleasant enteral rupture.)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

What a ridiculous question! The world never ceases to amaze me and I am always humbled by its beauty and complexity. If I must - The sun setting over Rebun-to from Rishiri-to - by far the most beautiful place I have ever been.

Or drinking ice-cold Asahi and eating unspeakably good bluefin tuna belly (never again) in Kyoto with my good friend Nick. I think that was about the most fun I've ever had.

Teach, Learn, Share

I've done a little cooking and bread-making with surfers before, and I could potentially show you how to butcher a pig or lamb, or build a clay oven or eco-house(!) I always like to learn a few words from another language. If you are interested, I can teach you how to cultivate fungi, but it may take some time! I can show you how to carve an amazing fan-bird in about 10 minutes.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, United Kingdom

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