Derek Jones

When Michael Owen decided that playing for Manchester United was an acceptable thing for an ex-Liverpool player to do, he must have realised that he was pushing himself towards the bottom of the ‘people that Scousers admire most’ list. Like many Liverpool fans I’ve tried hard to ignore Michael ever since, even to the point of muting the commentary when he’s chosen to share his intelligent, unbiased football insights. Imagine my annoyance then, when without warning his voice turned up on the radio in my car last week: ‘Hi! I’m Michael Owen and I know what it’s like to be injured at work.’ Brilliant! Two of the most unwelcome things in my life, Michael Owen and accident at work lawyers, combined in one radio ad to create a supernova of aggravation. I turned the radio off and in the silence that followed began to wonder if Michael had actually sued his employer for damages when he twisted his little toe on the penalty spot (or whatever it was that took him out of action for so lo...

I came to Berlin late. A corporate career working exclusively for Swiss and German owned businesses has at times made European cities like Zurich and Hannover feel like second homes. The regular rounds of meetings and conferences have at some point in the last twenty years taken me to most of the major European capitals. But for some reason, until this week, Berlin had eluded me. To be introduced to Berlin properly for the first time in 2017, post-Brexit, post-Trump, and in the week of the French Presidential election, was a sobering experience, even more so when I found myself listening to a line-up of senior German politicians sharing their thoughts on the future of Europe, in German, to a mostly German audience… and me. It hard to describe exactly how Germans view the result of our EU Referendum, especially when you only have anecdotal evidence collected on a two-day visit, but on a walkabout in Potsdamer Platz (more of which later) I struck up a conversation with a local. W...

I can’t imagine my life without travel. ‘Find a job you love’, so the saying goes, ‘and you’ll never work a day in your life’. In the last ten years I’ve been lucky enough to visit more than 30 countries and my constant companion (the only thing that I know for certain has been on all of those trips with me) has been my passport. We have a lot in common, me and my passport. As we’ve travelled together, we’ve aged together; the cover has gradually become weatherworn and wrinkled, not unlike my face. The stamps and visas emblazoned on the pages inside trigger memories of places visited and friends made. We’ve spent so much time together I think, by a process of osmosis, we probably share the same DNA. So this week was a sad week – it was time to renew. Arriving back from Stockholm late on Wednesday night, I slid my old passport face down for the very last time into the scanner at the Heathrow border. And as the glass gate opened in front of me, I said a quiet (but still quit...