Alice Allan

I am writer…and a mother. Typically, the contents of my handbag include: keys, coins, lollipops, hair bands, plasters, umpteen pens (so that’s where they all end up), a small plastic person with his head missing, a sort of scurf of biscuit crumbs, a pebble and…a receipt with some precious words scribbled on the back. “Thunder […]Read Post ›

Today I miss Addis Ababa. It glitters in my memory, in its haze of smog and dust. It’s been nearly three years now and the haze of nostalgia grows thicker. I miss our friends, good coffee, the way the eucalyptus shimmers silver and purple in the mountain breeze. I live in Central Asia now, and […]Read Post ›

There are many ways to give birth. Given our basic anatomical inflexibility, obviously, there are only a couple of actual egresses, but wow, the variations in birth culture. “Just don’t go overdue!” warned a fellow ex-pat mother in Japan, “They stuck seaweed up my you-know-what!” Apparently, there is a chemical in the seaweed that dilates […]Read Post ›

(www.tripfiction.com) I lived in Ethiopia for four years when my young family and I were posted there with my husband’s job. As a diplomatic family, we’d lived abroad before, but Ethiopia got under my skin like nowhere else. My book, Open My Eyes, That I May See Marvellous Things, is set in Addis Ababa. I […]Read Post ›

My  favorite childhood toy, or to coin the great British psychologist D.W Winnicott’s phrase, my transitional object, was (actually he still is) a puffin. He was given to me when I was two and quickly usurped a boss-eyed white bear to which I had previously been attached. I was faithful only to Puffin throughout my […]Read Post ›

Getachew gestures expansively at the massive range of flat- topped mountains before us. “This place, Ethiopia,” he muses, “is very up. Very down.” He’s not wrong. The drive to Magdala, Emperor Tewodros’s mountain fortress, takes 10 hours by 4×4 from Addis Ababa, rising slowly until the final hairpin ascent beneath sheer cliffs. Inspired by Philip […]Read Post ›