Never too old for a gap year

And finally...

2010-07-07T01:48:00.000-07:00

Before

After

Welcome to my last blog. I had intended to complete my scribblings on my antipodean adventures, but for reasons I shall explain I have changed my mind.

Writing the blog has forced a bit if discipline into my writing and I reckon I have a fund of about 150,000 words now to draw on should I complete my 75,000 word book. To date though there is little interest from the publishing world in a book about some middle aged bloke who takes a year out to do some exciting things. The rejection letters I receive from agents say roughly the same thing -' we feel it will be difficult to place a book of this kind given the current constraints of the market'. Without the hope of being published I need to use the time I have for writing to focus on projects that are more likely to bear fruit. For example, I am in the process of preparing a crime story for submission to a magazine called 'Crimewave'. Not all is lost though with regard to the book and a change of strategy is needed. I am now approaching publishers directly, or more specifically new publishers, as they offer most hope given their need to find new authors.

On a positive note, I recently published on here the first 10,000 words of said book. The same text was then submitted to Hull University as the final part of my Creative Writing Degree. The submission was well received and the mark I obtained was more than sufficient to gain me an award of First Class Honours. I'm not sure what doors such a degree might open, but it looks good on a covering letter when approaching publishers.

Apart from watching the dire World Cup, a lot of my time recently has been taken up with very pleasurable research. The terms of being given a place on their playwright course by Hull Truck Theatre are such that I have until the end of August to submit a play to them to consider and give me feedback on. Just as you can't write without reading so you can't create a play without going to the theatre. Thus, I have been cramming more theatre trips than usual into my schedule. The last was to see 'Cooking with Elvis' at Hull Truck. The advertising blurb didn't make the play sound very appealing, but it was one of the best and the funniest plays I have seen. A great script and a fantastic cast. If you live in or around Hull I urge you to catch this one before it goes. The play closes on Saturday 10th June.

I have also been paying visits to libraries and museums to research my own play. Originally one of the central characters was to be the spirit of a Native American. To create more local interest I have now set my play in Brough, on the shores of the Humber. In AD 71 the Roman Army crossed the Humber and settled in what was they called Petuaria. My new character is a rather randy old chap (well he's not had sex for nearly 2,000 years) called Marcus Ulpius Ianuarius, or Mikey to his mates. In real life Marcus was the magistrate for Petuaria. I am looking forward to bringing Mikey back to life over the next few weeks as I work on my play.

Looking back on the things I have been fortunate to do over the past year it is impossible to pick out a favourite. So many nice memories linger in my mind - the gentle mountain gorillas, the day on The Nile, walking up the Fox Glacier, climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge and of course doing the thing I always said I would never do - the bungee jump.

Do I have any more big adventures planned? Well, not on the scale of my trips to Africa, Australia and New Zealand. My cancelled trip to Hong Kong and Vietnam has left me 2 countries short of my target of visiting 10 countries that are new to me. To correct this I am taking a trip with my two sons next month. We are flying to Copenhagen, having a day out by rail in Malmo and taking the train for a stay in Hamburg. That way I add Denmark and Sweden to my list of 'new' countries.I also have a yen to travel coast to coast across the USA next year.

I am looking forward to cycling from coast to coast across England at the end of August. Following my collapse during the half marathon I have begun to cycle more and run less. It is really good fun and is so much kinder to my knees. I am drooling over a new bike in the local cycle shop.

I was asked recently what I thought was different about me following my year off. I concluded that I was less tolerant. The best thing about my life now is getting up in the morning and being the boss of me. I don't answer to anyone. In a perverse way, having more time has made me appreciate it even more. In the words of The Desiderata, I avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. I also avoid situations that I think will be boring or tedious. I seek out situations that are exciting or which I will learn from. That makes me sound very selfish and self-centred, but I would like to believe that I am simply focussed on making the most of my time on this wonderful planet. Twenty three years ago I had been married for just 5 months when my wife was involved in a dreadful road accident that left her scarred for life and forced her to give up nursing. I learned then that what seems important one second is irrelevant the next. Life can change in the blink of an eye. It is a lesson I have never forgotten. I don't need a heart attack or a cancer scare to remind me to cherish my life.

What has definitely changed is there is less of me and what remains is much fitter and active. I owe it mostly to Tesco Diets, an online slimming and fitness guide. Every week for 18 months I have been weighing in and leaving some comment about how the week has gone. In return I receive an email of support and advice from a nutritionist. Of course, there's more to it than that, but those weekly weigh-in have motivated me to keep going.

I lost a lot of weight and got fitter just to undertake my gap year. Since returning from New Zealand I have been able to lose more weight and train more often. I have reached my goal, which was to lose 3 stones. Tesco seem to be very proud of what I have done (as with most slimming clubs the majority of the clientele are ladies and male losers are rarer) and have made me a 'success story', which affords me free lifetime membership of Tesco Diets. They have also invited me for an all expenses paid day in London for a photo-shoot as one of seven big fat losers. I am quite stunned and thrilled by this.

Finally, thank you to those that have taken the time to follow my inane ramblings on here. If I have left any loose ends or you have any questions please leave a comment or email me at bryan.moiser@googlemail.com.

Live long and prosper,

Bryan and Wainwright.

Waitangi Day (Part 3)

2010-07-05T02:04:00.000-07:00

A warm welcome - the young girls in the front row were from various backgrounds. Two of them were English and had only been in NZ for a year. During that time they had learned about Maori culture to then point where they were confident members of this group. In many way ways that is what Waitangi Day is all about.
My new brothers and sisters

Making our way onto the treaty ground I was drawn by the sound of singing and guitars that led me to a large group of Maoris in traditional costumes. They appeared to be suffering from a collective personality disorder. One minute the group were singing melodically, all warm and inviting. The next they were all making threatening gestures and poking their tongues out at me.

The women in particular fascinated me. Maybe it was their sheer beauty or maybe I was simply transfixed by the skilful way they swung their poi balls in time to the music. By the way, ‘poi balls’ is not a rude euphemism, even if they do always appear in pairs. They are balls held together by a piece of cord and swung in rhythmic and sometimes complicated patterns.

As my love affair with the Maori blossomed it was not enough to see them, I wanted to be one. So when the leader of the group invited people to join them on stage to sing and dance I was up there quicker than you can say ‘Waitangi Day’. Mercifully, the singing wasn’t very testing as it was more of a chanted melody and the dance steps were simple enough even for my two left size twelves. Sadly, I didn’t receive any offers of marriage from the beautiful women, but as the men shook my hand and thanked me for joining them I felt a little bit more Maori than I had at the start of the day.

My eagerness to join my new tribe combined with my English reserve robbed me of a one-off opportunity. I returned to my place on the grass in front of the stage and about 10 minutes later the group made a further invitation – they wanted men to join them in the Haka, the traditional Maori dance. The most famous exponents on the Haka are the All Blacks, the New Zealand Rugby Union team, as they perform it to frighten the crap out of their opponents before every match. Theirs is just one version of the dance, each tribe having its own rendition of the thigh slapping, eye bulging, tongue poking ritual.

I desperately wanted to join my new brothers in performing this iconic war dance. But, having already been on stage once, I didn’t want to appear as though I was hogging the limelight and foolishly I stayed put and allowed other middle aged men to steal the show. It was near the start of our trip and I reassuringly told myself that there would be another opportunity. There wasn’t.

After a wander around the treaty grounds and visiting the Treaty House, Pete and I made our way back to our car and drove further along the shore to our rendezvous with Dan, the kayak man.

Dan was a very slim, twenty-something, laid back and affable Kiwi who prepared us for the first of our New Zealand activities. We were joined by a young, Irish girl, whose name I could never catch. Sioboleenough, or something like that. She was 14 months into her world tour, having just spent 6 months in Australia and was about due to head over to South America next.

Suitably instructed and kitted out, the four of us took two double kayaks out into the gentle waters of the bay in the late afternoon sunshine. Our destination was a point about a mile distant where we beached the kayaks and then made a steep trek up through the woods. Waiting for us was Lindon, his dog and his beautiful vineyard.

What followed was an idyllic evening of wine tasting, cheese and biscuits and Lindon’s charming company as the sun set over the rows of vines around us and the bay beneath us. The wine was exquisite, although the vineyard was too small to make enough for export. One of the ‘must-sees’ Pete and I had excluded from our trip was the Marlborough wine region on South Island. Our hour or so with Lindon in his beautiful part of the land made up for the loss.

Lindon explained that this had once been Maori land but they found the soil too poor to produce crops. It was, however, perfect for growing vines and had been bought from the Maori for just two dollars and a couple of blankets. This information tested my loyalties. I liked Lindon and his wine, but here was a living example of the exploitation of my Maori brothers. I was very tempted to begin a protest march around the vines and maybe even crush the odd grape in defiance. Instead I reverted to being a British tourist and followed Lindon into his wine store where he did me a very good deal on a couple of bottles of delicious Pinot Noir.

The Final Challenge

2010-06-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

There were more entrants than I had imagined for yesterday's Humber Bridge Half Marathon - just over 2,000. It was hot even before we began the 13 mile gruelling run and contestants sheltered in the shade around the start point.

I got off to a good start, maybe a little too fast, but I had trained for 3 months for this and was feeling confident. That confidence waned as I hauled myself up the first of the hills at about 4 miles. My legs began to feel tired and the temperature was rising.

I reached half-way at just under an hour and was on target for the 2 hour finish I had set myself.

As predicted, the ninth mile was torture. An undulating mile long climb, it tested my stamina to the limit. Many people began to walk. I just pushed on, knowing that if I stopped I would never get going again. Finally, the haul was over and I reached the 10 mile marker. Just three miles to go. What could go wrong?

The heat and the climbs had sapped me and as I reached the final mile I was running on sheer will power. There were just 7 minutes until the 2 hour mark, so it was obvious I was not going to reach my target. Finishing became my objective even though my body screamed at me to stop this madness. I pushed on.

Less than half a mile from the finish was when it happened. I became light headed and then bang! Down I went. Heat exhaustion had taken me.

I don't remember falling. It was as if I had been shot. I couldn't move a muscle. There were people all around me. For some reason I thought I was surrounded by police officers and had been arrested. I began to panic and struggled to breathe.

An ambulance crew arrived and I heard calming, reassuring voices. They strapped me to a board and put me in the ambulance. Hands were all over me - attaching electrodes, inserting oxygen tubes, taking blood, fixing me to a drip. I am fortunate to have been healthy all my life. This was a new and very frightening experience. I know it is a cliché, but I didn't know what day it was. I struggled to remember but it was no good.

My condition stabilised, we made the journey to Hull Royal where I spent the afternoon on a drip and gradually got better.

The local newspaper reports that the race took place on the hottest day of the year, with temperatures peaking at 28 degrees.

So, a task failed. There are other half marathons but I have no intention of entering them. 10k's on cool days for me in the future.

Yet it wasn't all failure. The race epitomised what my gap year has been about. I have been to wonderful places and done exciting things. Wherever I have gone though it has always been the kindness and generosity of people that has shone through. The fact that I am well enough to be typing this is testimony to the legion of people who helped me yesterday. Some of those who came to my aid must have been runners who rather than push on to the finish gave up their race to help me. When I was released from hospital, perhaps a little foolishly, I decided to take a taxi to recover my car.

On arrival back at the bridge I found the field where cars had been parked was secure. There was a note on my windscreen with a number to ring to have the gate opened. As I waited for the gate to be unlocked I was approached by a man and his wife. He turned out to be a retired police officer from a southern force. He was concerned for my safety and insisted that he drove me home whilst his wife followed in their car. I protested but gave in as I knew he was right and I wasn't really fit to drive.

For me, that is what travel and maybe life is about - the total and unexpected kindness of strangers.

It ain't half hot mum

2010-06-26T02:10:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, Sunday 27th June, looks like being one of the hottest days of the year so far in England. Temperatures are forecast to reach 26 degrees Celsius. That's just perfect for drinking cold beer and having a barbie whilst England take on the mighty Germans once more in the World Cup. For me it is a disaster.

In the morning I face the last of my 20 challenges as my gap year officially draws to a close. The challenge is to run a half marathon (13 miles/21km) in under 2 hours. To achieve this I have entered the Humber Bridge Half Marathon.

My training has gone well. I ran the Humber Bridge 10k in just over 50 minutes 3 weeks ago. That's by far my personal best and 6 minutes faster than the same race last year. My training runs have also gone well, the longest being 12 miles, which I ran in 1 hour 45 minutes. So, on paper, I am on target to complete the final challenge successfully. The problem, of course, is the weather. My 10k race was run on a cool day with a lovely light drizzle to keep my temperature down. Once the heat begins to rise the running gets more and more like moving through treacle.

All I can do is turn up for the 10.30 am start fuelled up on pasta, porridge and lucozade sport and enjoy the run, whatever the outcome. Just to finish will be a significant achievement for someone like me who was not built by my creator for long distance anything. I have even slimmed down further for this race and I am now at the target I have been working towards for 18 months. If I don't make it tomorrow then it won't be for the lack of proper training and diet. Maybe being fit enough and healthy enough to enter the race was the real challenge. But a time of 1 hour 59 minutes and 59 seconds will make my gap year complete.

Waitangi Day (Part 2)

2010-06-22T03:28:00.000-07:00

As Pete and I drove down the road to Paihia it was with some vague notion of having a wander around the beach and grabbing some lunch. We had booked a sea kayaking trip in the late afternoon. What we found instead was a sea of people and signs and posters pointing to the Waitangi Day celebrations. Parking in one of the designated car parks we had little option but to join the throng as we wondered what the hell was going on. If it was some sort of Maori car boot sale then it was a big one.

Waitangi Day has been commemorated since 1947 and became a national holiday in 1974. But just as I had discovered with Australia Day two weeks earlier it was not a cause for celebration by every resident.

Along the beach traditional war canoes, manned by tattooed Maoris in tribal costumes, beat their way over the waves to challenge a frigate of the New Zealand Navy that was anchored off-shore. On the other side of the road a large field was full of stalls selling all kinds of foods, T shirts and handicrafts. Pete and I grabbed some fast food and a few thirst quenching drinks and then did something that was to prove controversial.

By now we had grasped the fact that we were in the midst of an important celebration and it seemed that the heart of activities was to be found further down the road, on the small outcrop of land where the Treaty House was situated. Between us and the celebrations there was a river, crossed by a bridge that was just about wide enough to let one car across at a time. There was a mass of people on the bridge, some carrying banners and most of them chanting something in Maori. Since there was no other way to get to the where we wanted to be Pete and I joined the crowd and got swept along. Luckily they were going the same way as us. On the bridge I noticed we were being filmed by several camera crews and it dawned on me that we weren’t just ambling over a bridge. We had become part of a protest march.

I fell in step behind a couple of mothers with pushchairs and even when we were off the bridge I was very happy to be part of this band of determined and vociferous marchers. Beside me there was a Maori lady who can’t have been above five feet tall. She wore a fluorescent bib over some kind of Community Warden’s uniform and was clearly there to act as a steward and not as a protester.

‘What are we doing?’ I asked the mini-warden.

‘It’s a special day,’ she replied. ‘On this day the people are allowed to march and air their grievances.’

‘What are they protesting about?’

‘They want change. To put right the wrongs.’

‘What do they want to change?’ I asked. If a man is going to protest it only seems reasonable that he should know what he is protesting about.

‘Lots of things.’

I tried a more direct approach.

‘Okay. So what do you want to change?’

The warden thought for a second and then replied:

‘To be honest, I’m sick of change.’

For a few years after 1840 the treaty worked well. But as more and more settlers arrived so the demand for land increased. Crown land agents purchased Maori land and often used dubious means to do so. Transactions were further complicated by the fact that in Maori culture there was communal, not individual ownership of land. By 1864, 34 million acres of Maori land in the South Island had been purchased for £14,750. That is less than one penny per acre. The Maori now owned only a thousandth of their original land on South Island.

During this time there was also a shift in power as the New Zealand Government was created, but allowed only four seats for Maori representation.

In the North Island in the 1860’s and early 1870’s the government used force to break resistance to land sales and confiscations.

Disputes over land continue to this day and are settled by the Waitangi Tribunal, which was established in 1975 to investigate both historic and contemporary disputes over breaches in the Waitangi Treaty by the British Crown.

Although we did not know it, when Pete and I joined the march we were taking part in a Maori tradition of protest over civil rights and land loss that goes back to nineteenth century. In 1882 a Maori delegation even travelled to England to appeal to Queen Victoria personally. Vicky was not amused and told them to go home and deal the government of the day.

I realise that as a tourist I probably attained a biased view of Maori culture. One that is marketed and promoted by the tourist industry. During our stay Pete and I were greeted with warmth and friendship wherever we went by people of all backgrounds. But the Maori people earned a special place in my affections. Their adherence to their culture and traditions gained my respect and admiration.

There was nothing touristy about the protest march. Indeed, I’m sure it is something the tourist board would have rather did not take place. At the time I found it amusing for a law abiding citizen such as myself to take part in a political protest. Knowing how police forces work, I am sure that some of those cameras pointed at me were owned by Special Branch and my ugly mug shot is now filed on a police computer.

I was proud to have taken part in that march, and as Pete and I continued our tour we would often mention what we did to people we encountered by way of an amusing anecdote. Often, though, our jolly tale would be met with harsh words and a hint of hostility. One elderly white lady even told me:

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ She then went on to tell me an anecdote of her own that revealed a troubling point of view.

‘The Maoris are always complaining about land loss. There was a lovely golf club that had taken years to build. The greens were beautiful. But the Maori complained that it was on tribal land. So the golf club reached a settlement. They built another golf course and the Maoris took ownership of the land. They let it go to ruin. Weeds and bushes everywhere. It was heartbreaking. I wouldn’t mind, but the Maoris don’t even play golf.’

Waitangi Day (Part 1)

2010-06-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

Ka Mate, Ka Mate!

('Tis Death, 'Tis Death!)

Traditional canoe

Planning my trip to Australia had been straightforward. In 12 days I was never going to see much of such a huge country so it was a simple case of deciding on what would be the most adventurous and interesting trip from Sydney. By contrast, making the most of our three weeks in Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, proved to be a very difficult task for Pete and me and it took us several attempts to come up with a workable plan.

The population of New Zealand is about 4.3 million, slightly less than the population of the Republic of Ireland. The total land mass, however, is greater than the whole of the United Kingdom. Geographically it is a land of contrasts and diversity that range from the semi-tropical tip of the North Island to the glacial Fiordland on the western coast of the South Island. For a trip of only 21 days it soon became obvious that some of the ‘unmissable’ sights would have to be excluded.

For both of us there was a sense that this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip and we had to squeeze as much out of it as possible. Our original plan was to either hire a camper van to tour both islands or to hire a car and stop at motels along the way. But as we poured over the map and checked the distances it was apparent that trying to see even a limited number of attractions would mean lots of driving and very little time for actually doing any of the numerous exciting activities on offer to the adventurer.

Most people who we spoke to who had been to New Zealand had the same advice to offer – ‘Spend as much time as you can on South Island.’ We contemplated ignoring North Island all together, but the Bay of Islands, in the north east, and Rotorua, in the middle of North Island, both featured high in our list of places we simply could not miss.

In the end it was Air New Zealand that came to our rescue, as we discovered that it was fairly inexpensive to hop from place to place by plane and save hours on the corresponding road journey. What we settled on was an exciting mishmash of short flights, the ferry, scenic railway journeys and hire cars. I was put in charge of accommodation and working to a budget of $120 a day (about £60) I was able to book us into a range of motels, bed and breakfasts and one room, backpacker type accommodations.

Thus it was that on my second full day in New Zealand we made our way back to the airport to take a 40 minute flight to Kerikeri, the airport that serves the Bay of Islands, a journey that would have taken three and half hours by road.

The small car we had hired for our 2 night stay was waiting for us at the airport. Having booked into our motel we immediately set off to explore and headed for Paihia, as this seemed to be the centre of activities. As I’ve said before, serendipity, making fortunate discoveries by accident, is often one of the brilliant by-products of travel. In New Zealand it was a word that was to define our trip and never more so than what was waiting for us as we journeyed to the coastal heart of the Bay of Islands.

New Zealand is one of the most recently settled major land masses. Unlike the Australian Aborigines, the Maori are not truly indigenous as they are the descendents of Polynesian islanders who arrived by canoe about 800 years ago. Also unlike the Aborigines, the Maoris were never a conquered people who had their lands taken from them by force of arms. The signing of a treaty with Great Britain in 1840 has made a big difference to the way in which Maori culture has survived and is evident throughout Aoteaora.

There were about 100,000 Maoris in New Zealand in 1830 and only about 200 Europeans. Drawn mainly by whaling, the number of Europeans, who were mostly British, grew to about 2,000 by 1839. The Maoris were divided into tribes and there were many conflicts. The Europeans brought muskets with them, which the Maoris readily traded for food and flax. An arms race developed as the tribes armed with muskets had an enormous advantage over those with traditional weapons. The so called Musket Wars claimed the lives of about 20,000 Maoris. As with the nuclear arms race of the late 20th Century, it was only when all the tribes had access to the same firepower that peace prevailed.

The Maoris were open to change and welcomed the new ideas brought by the Europeans. The missionaries brought books with them and taught people to read, opening up a new world of learning. Some Maoris travelled the world on the boats that came to their shores. In 1820 two tribal chiefs even travelled to England and met with King George IV.

From the British point of view, trade with the Maoris provided timber for boat building and flax to make rope. It was largely to protect this advantageous trade link that Britain sought to create a treaty with the people of New Zealand.

Towards the end of the 1830’s there were speculative ‘purchases’ of Maori land by Europeans and capitalists from New South Wales. The New Zealand Company, which originated in London in 1839 with the express aim of promoting the colonisation of New Zealand, claimed to have bought 20 million acres of land. The debate over whether the land transactions meant the same to the purchasers as it did to the Maori sellers continues to this day. The Maori culture did not necessarily see the trade in land as a permanent loss.

The Treaty of Waitangi was instituted by the British Government, prompted by concerns over lawlessness, tribal wars and the prospect of formal colonisation by The New Zealand Company. The treaty was in effect the founding document of the nation of New Zealand. It established a British Governor, recognised Maori ownership of their lands and gave Maoris the rights of British subjects. The treaty was written in English and a Maori version was written by a missionary. The two documents did not agree.

On the morning of 6th February, 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by 45 tribal chiefs in front of the Treaty House at Waitangi, in the Bay of Islands. Little did any of those present know that exactly 170 years later to the day two more hapless Brits would pitch up at the same location totally oblivious to the importance of its significance or the anniversary.

Gay Boys on Tour

2010-06-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

Going...

Going...

Gone!

A vision of the future?

My third plane of the day landed in Auckland at gone midnight. I made the 12 mile trip to the city centre by bus and walked wearily to the large hotel where I was to spend my first two nights in New Zealand. Checking in at reception I suddenly heard a familiar voice call my name from across the lobby.

I met Pete in 1991 when we were both working as police trainers. He was very supportive during my divorce and over the years we have embarked on a number of ‘Boy’s weekends’. Our trips have covered England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We even squeezed in stays in Paris and Bruges.

It was a long held ambition of Pete’s to travel to New Zealand but his wife refused to undertake the long haul journey. When I announced that I was intending to visit the land of the long white cloud Pete immediately said he wanted to come too. I doubted that he would join me as I knew he would feel guilty about leaving Dianne, behind. But Di had not been married to Pete for over 30 years without knowing that being without her husband for three weeks was better than years of regret at a missed opportunity. And so it was that we came to be sharing yet another hotel room on our biggest adventure ever.

To my shame, sharing a room with Pete is always a difficult experience for me. It’s all about how it is perceived by others. Although Pete and I are both tall, burly chaps, it is fair to say that we both have a feminine side that seems to come to the fore when we are together. We make a very convincing gay couple. Once when attempting to book a twin room in Paris we were met with a resounding: ‘Mais, non!’ by the homophobic receptionist and forced to accept two single rooms to avoid us sullying the establishment.

I am so paranoid about being perceived as Pete’s lover that I protest my heterosexuality loudly to anyone willing to listen. When Pete and I emerge for breakfast together I usually manage to talk loudly about how many children I’ve got as a way of suggesting that I am as straight as they come. I even asked a very nice family that Pete and I met at a race meeting if they thought we were gay. ‘God, yes,’ came the resounding reply. ‘Especially you.’ In the modern age I am sure no one gives a fig about my sexuality, but that doesn’t stop me getting very self-conscious about the issue.

Pete, having arrived direct from London early that morning, had made the fatal mistake of falling asleep in the afternoon and was now wide awake. The luxury of our room with its two queen sized beds was a huge contrast to what I had been used to in Australia. Despite the lateness of the hour, Pete broke out a few bottles of beer and we caught up with each other. Pete could hardly contain his excitement about being in New Zealand and embarking on his dream trip. After the indulgence of solo travel it was an excitement that was to become a little bit irritating at times.

Next morning we were up early to make the most of our one day together in Auckland. We dined alfresco at a lovely cafe just down from the hotel and then made our way on foot to the city centre. We didn’t need to follow the map as the structure we were heading for is the tallest man-made feature in New Zealand. The Sky Tower is over a thousand feet tall (328 metres to be precise) and on a clear day it affords views of 50 miles in all directions. For me, the most interesting aspect of the tower was watching the brave individuals outside who had paid £100 to jump off the building.

Dressed in fetching all-in-one suits, the jumpers venture out onto a platform 600 feet high. Painted onto the concrete below is a very handy red and white bull’s-eye target. Securely attached to a harness they then swing out below a gantry and wave at the astonished onlookers inside the tower. Then, whoosh, off they go, falling at 50 miles per hour to the plaza below. The trip takes 11 seconds.

Pete suffers dreadfully from vertigo so a Sky Jump was definitely not on his list of things to do in Auckland. In fact, I was quite surprised that he even wanted to go up the tower at all. Seeing people in jump suits falling to the ground brought back bad memories of my parachuting experience, so I too chose to take the lift down instead.

Auckland has a natural harbour called Waitemata. It is sheltered from the Pacific Ocean by two islands, Rangitoto and Waiheke. Pete had already made the short journey across to Rangitoto whilst waiting for me to arrive the previous day so we decided to take the one hour ferry ride out to Waiheke.

The island was beautiful and it is hard to imagine something so sublime as close to a city. Not surprisingly a number of people lived on the island and used the ferry service to commute to jobs in Auckland. The countryside would have appeared very English was it not for the odd vineyard dotted around the coast. It was like the English Lake District only next to a clear sea and given a temperate climate. In fact, with any luck, if sea levels continue to rise and global warming continues then this is exactly what the English countryside will look like in just a few years. So scrap those useless energy saving bulbs, get burning the fossil fuels and break out the Oakleys and Factor 30.

Pete is an avid birdwatcher and despite my complete lack of interest in most of the little feathered sods he insists on pointing them out to me on every trip we undertake. The New World meant whole swathes of new species for Pete to study through his binoculars. His ornithological juices were overflowing. Add to that the fact that he was in the land of his dreams, where everything was to be wondered at, and Pete was definitely in a constant and animated frenzy of ecstasy.

I spent the evening before I embarked for Australia in the company of a very lovely lady whose company I had desired for a while. I had spent five months, ever since I came back from Africa, trying to win her over but as ever, the course of true love was littered with obstacles. The obstacle in this case was a rather beefy ex-boyfriend who didn’t agree on the ‘ex’ bit. Despite her ‘I can’t wait for you to get back’ assurances, I had my doubts and embarked on my trip like a sailor going to sea, not sure what I would be coming home to.

I had not discussed my concerns with anyone, but now, with my long time friend and confidante, Pete, by my side I had the opportunity to unburden myself. As we meandered along the Waiheke coastal path and a country lane beset on both sides by lush vineyards I opened up to my good buddy. I told him of all the ins and outs and ups and downs of my frustrating, yet potentially life changing courtship. After twenty minutes I drew to a breathless halt and said:

‘So, what do you think I should do?’

‘Wow! Look at that rock,’ said Pete.

Robbo

2010-06-14T01:44:00.000-07:00

Next morning the reliable shuttle bus arrived to take me back to the airport for the first of three flights that would take me back to Alice Springs and then on to Auckland via Melbourne. I envisaged a rather dull and tiring day ahead, but Australia had a surprise farewell gift for me.

Checking in for my flight to Alice I couldn’t help but notice a huge pile of luggage and equipment piled up in front of one of the check-in desks. At the heart of the pile there were large film cameras and a guitar case. The heap appeared to belong to a group of six blokes who were hovering nearby and engaged in animated conversation with each other. Was I in the presence of a rock band? I quickly tried to think of all the Aussie bands I knew. Men at Work and INXS were the only two that came to mind and they would surely all be much older than the six pack before me.

On closer inspection I discerned that the group could be divided in two. There were a couple of older, average looking guys, who I took to be some sort of crew, and four young, fit, good looking blokes. ‘The talent’, as they seem to say in showbiz circles.

It was one of those rare occasions when my plea for extra leg room for my 6 feet 3 inch frame was accepted and I got a row of three seats next to the exit over the wing all to myself. On the opposite side of the aisle, occupying the equally capacious seats and the row in front of them were the six amigos.

Their spirits were very high as they laughed heartily to the succession of one-liners they threw at each other. As the banter continued, so the division between crew and talent became more distinct. At the heart of it all was the guy sat in the aisle seat just across from me. He was incredibly good looking, like the sort of prat you see in magazine adverts for expensive aftershave. Except this bloke wasn’t a prat at all. He seemed to be very jovial and pleasant, the others clearly deferring to him and calling him ‘Robbo’.

As soon as the plane was in the air and the seatbelt sign was switched off there was a mad rush by the all female cabin crew to attend to the every need of our on-board celebrities. A giggly but gorgeous blond girl stood with her back to me as she poured herself over Robbo. Leaning in as close to her bum as I dare, I strained to hear the conversation.

‘Been on holiday?’ said the stewardess.

‘No. Working,’ said Robbo, in a smooth Australian accent.

‘Working?’ she echoed back to him. This was good. The attractive young lady was conducting an interview for me. I wanted to reach for my notepad but that would have been a bit obvious so I pretended to listen to my iPod instead.

‘We’ve been doing an ad for the Tourist Board,’ said Robbo obligingly. ‘Last year it was Melbourne and this year it was Ayer’s Rock Resort.’

‘Was it good?’

‘It was great, apart from all the bloody flies!’ interjected one of Robbo’s mates to all round laughter.

For the rest of the short flight the young men, and Robbo in particular, received an inordinate amount of attention from the cabin crew. It was a frustrating journey for me as the noise of the engines and my failing hearing prevented me from catching anything other than snippets of conversation. I still had no idea who these guys were. Leaning across and saying: ‘Excuse me, but who the hell are you?’ seemed a bit rude. What would Bill Bryson do in this situation?

As the flight neared its end and the coffee cups and empty peanut packets were all stowed away, all three of the female cabin crew gathered in the aisle next to me in a frenzy of flirting and autograph signing. Maybe the odd phone number changed hands too.

Time was running out. Managing to get the attention of the star-struck blond girl for a few seconds, I quietly asked her who these guys were.

‘They’re footie stars. They play for Melbourne.’

A second later and I was facing her bum once more. But no matter, I had the information I wanted and an idea began to form.

As the aircraft made its decent the cabin crew reluctantly peeled themselves away from their heroes and returned to their seats. I leaned across the aisle and spoke to Robbo.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, in a very English manner. ‘I wonder if I could make a very strange request?’ Robbo looked quizzical as I pointed to the overhead locker.

‘In my bag I have a gnome. He’s dressed in my football team’s colours. Would you mind having your photograph taken with him?’

‘Sure, no problem,’ said the obliging Robbo. ‘What team is it?’

‘Hull City, English Premier League. We’re second from bottom.’

‘No worries.’ I couldn’t tell from his expression whether Robbo had ever heard of Hull City. I suspect not.

Once the plane was on the ground there was a final rush by the cabin crew to obtain autographs and pictures while I slid out quietly and got myself ready outside. I took my camera and the fragile Wainwright out of my padded backpack and waited. A minute or so later Robbo clambered down the steps from the aircraft and broke into a huge grin as he spotted Wainwright.

Clearly used to media attention, Robbo was an absolute pro. He held Wainwright aloft, posing and smiling for the camera. Robbo, it turned out was one Russell Robertson, a 31 year old retired Australian Rules footballer. He admitted to not knowing much about English football but said he hoped to come to London and see Chelsea play.

Later, when I had the chance to search the internet, I discovered that Robbo was one of Melbourne’s greatest goal kickers of all time. Not surprisingly, his personality and good looks had led to TV work and modelling. After singing on an Australian TV show he has even brought out his own album, Higher. To me he was a top bloke who couldn’t have been nicer when faced with a very unusual request from a mad pom..

Uluru (Part 2)

2010-06-11T01:55:00.000-07:00

Kuniya woz 'ere

To climb or not to climb?

The sun sets on my Australian adventure

Seeing the sun rise at Uluru was one of my 20 gap year challenges and the one I regarded as the most spiritual. Even more so than visiting a Buddhist temple. When I added it to the list it was with a vague notion of experiencing some kind of primeval transformation. That as the sun rose over this ancient monument it would bring with it the dawn of a new understanding in my life. I might even become a nomad myself and decide to end my days wandering the earth, much like Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970’s TV series, Kung Fu.

As Sophie, Noona, Ronald and I set out on our 7 mile walk around the base of Uluru the light grew brighter and as the sun peeked above the horizon I braced myself for a life changing burst of inner illumination.

Nothing. Perhaps if I’d sat down for a quiet meditation it might have helped, but I don’t think the others would have been amused. And besides, it’s hard to free your mind when sat cross legged and eyes closed in an environment that harbours so many things that can kill you.

Not that my trek around this iconic feature of Australia was a failure. I may not have experienced a useful shortcut in my search for enlightenment, but the walk did allow me to gain an insight into the true significance of this 500 million year old rock.

I’m not sure if the TV series, QI, has ever considered it, but I can imagine the all-knowing Stephen Fry posing the question: ‘What colour is Uluru?’ This will be followed by Alan Davies blurting out: ‘Red!’ and the inevitable sound of the siren to indicate a huge blunder.

The true answer is ‘Grey’. What gives the rock its red colour is a coating of dust and sand from the surrounding landscape, which, being rich in iron ore, oxidises when it rains. In other words, Uluru is rusty.

This is one of the many things I learned from Sophie. Up close, the rock has many features that are not seen in the usual photographs. Our enthusiastic guide explained the significance of the various formations and overhangs as we went along:

‘The aborigine people believe in the dreamtime, when the earth was created. Before this time everything was featureless. The ancient ancestors, often in animal form, left their marks upon the earth and these are the features of the land that we see today.

‘Uluru is of particular spiritual importance. Not only was it formed by the ancestors but it is a sacred place where their spirits still roam.

‘Legend has it that one tribe of ancestors invited another tribe to a feast. But the guests were distracted by the Sleepy Lizard Women and never made it to the party. The hosts, angry at being snubbed, created a huge dingo from mud to attack the other tribe. A big battle followed and the earth itself rose up in grief, becoming Uluru.’

As we continued our early morning tour, Sophie pointed out the various rock features – hidden faces of the ancestors, curving rock formations created by the giant python, Kuniya and the round boulders that are her eggs. And several caves bearing ancient drawings such as large snakes and witchetty grubs, inscribed by the aborigines.

Sophie also told us that the name, Uluru, actually refers to a waterhole in the top of the rock. And here, for me, was the true revelation about Uluru. I had expected to see a sterile, sun baked rock, but in reality Uluru is a giver of life. It harbours a wide array of fauna – lizards, snakes, birds of prey and mammals such as possums, bats and dingoes. The various rock pools helping to sustain an abundance of life.

Sophie led us to the well hidden path that would take us to Maggie’s Spring. Shaded by trees on both sides, the walk along the path was cool and quiet. At the end there was an unexpected expanse of fresh water, a good 60 feet across. It is an area where the aborigines come to meditate and I could see, or even feel, the attraction. Here at last was my spiritual moment with Uluru. A few stolen moments of peace within its strong embrace.

Maggie’s Spring, or Mutujulu Springs to give it it’s native title, was named by William Grosse, an adventurer who was the first white man to set foot on the rock in July 1873. In true bum licking fashion, Grosse named his discovery after Sir Henry Ayers, the then Chief Secretary of South Australia. Grosse had a thing for one of Ayer’s daughters, Maggie, and duly named the spring after her in the confident hope that this would secure her hand in marriage. It didn’t. By the time Bill returned from his adventures to claim the one he loved she had found someone else.

Uluru not only sustains wildlife but humans too. It is amazing just how much greenery there is to be found around the rock and among the various bushes and trees there is much ‘bush tucker’ to be found for those in need of food. Uluru may have a massive spiritual and cultural significance for the aborigines, but it also has a far more practical one too. It is, in effect, nature’s larder. A place of last resort where life-saving food and water can be found.

Fortunately for me I was spared a diet of witchetty grubs, honey ants and berries as the resourceful Sophie had provided a very pleasant breakfast for us. Never before have I eaten cereal and yoghurt in such splendid surroundings.

As our journey progressed and the sun and temperature rose, we came to the most controversial feature of Uluru. The climb.

It was never my intention to climb Uluru. Apart from the controversy, the summit is 1,142 feet high. In the late morning heat it was hard enough to walk on the flat earth without straining up a rock slope that has a 45 degree incline in places. To make the climb easier a local businessman and his mates concreted steel poles into the solid rock back in 1962. The poles are linked by a sturdy chain to allow the adventurous and foolhardy to haul themselves up. From the bottom it doesn’t look difficult but by the time of our visit there had been 39 deaths on the rock, mostly caused by heart attacks. Why is it that people will drive to shops and park as close to the door as they can but give them a steep slope to climb and the promise of a nice view and off they go?

The day we visited the climb was closed anyway, as it often is. The winds making it even more dangerous. When Uluru was given back to the Anangu in 1985 one of the conditions was that people would still be able to climb the rock. The number doing so is in decline owing to the growing awareness of Aborigine culture and the significance of the climb to the indigenous population. There is a very polite sign at the foot of Uluru that reads:

‘Our traditional Law teaches us the proper way to behave. We ask you to respect our Law by not climbing Uluru.

‘What visitors call 'the climb' is the traditional route taken by ancestral Mala man upon their arrival at Uluru in the creation time. It has great spiritual significance. We have a responsibility to teach and safeguard visitors to our land. 'The climb' is dangerous and too many people have died while attempting to climb Uluru.

‘Many others have been injured while climbing. We feel great sadness when a person dies or is hurt on our land.’

Despite this it is estimated that about a third of visitors to Uluru still choose to climb up it.

Sophie, who was very passionate about the rights and traditions of the Anangu, told me that sometimes she has guests who protest about all the fuss made over climbing Uluru.

‘The rock was there long before the bloody aborigines’, was a typical comment made by one young man on one of her tours. To her amusement the others in the group turned on the youth and staked him out naked in the burning sun. Or perhaps they just tore into him verbally, but that was what she was wishing they had done.

With my reporter’s nose for a good story I asked Sophie about some of the unfortunate fates that had befallen those climbing the rock.

‘A young couple decided they didn’t want to come down from there the normal way and decided to make their own way down. Inevitably they got stuck and had to be rescued by helicopter. They were eternally grateful to the ranger who saved them until he fined them 4,600 dollars for breaching the national park law.

‘Then there was the guy who camped out for the night on the top of Uluru. He would have been ok had his torch light not been spotted by the rangers. Next day he got a hefty fine too.

‘But my favourite is the guy who decided to climb up there wearing Crocs, those light shoes made of rubber? He got so far before the rubber began to melt and stick to the rock. So he took off the Crocs. But then his feet began to burn on the rock. So he sat down. Of course his bum then began to burn too. In desperation he took off his shirt to sit on and then managed to get 2nd degree burns on his chest and shoulders.’

I can’t help but notice a look of what seemed to be glee on Sophie’s face as she told me this.

By midday we had completed our circumambulation of Uluru and I was relieved to step into the air conditioned comfort of the Land Rover. I was very pleased to have made the acquaintance of Uluru and we both promised to keep in touch, but I knew that this was just holiday talk. It hadn’t been the spiritually uplifting experience that I had expected. Thanks to Sophie though I had learned a lot about this famous Australian icon and I was glad that I had taken the time to walk all the way around it and witness its many hidden secrets instead of just taking a quick picture from the view point as so many tourists seemed to do. I was also glad that I had made Uluru the goal of my Australian adventure. From the manmade wonders of Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House to the natural wonder of Uluru, it had been a fantastic journey. Time though to move on to an entirely different world and one where I was guaranteed a comfortable bed every night even if I did have to share the room with a man known for snoring.

Uluru (Part 1)

2010-06-09T08:44:00.001-07:00

Up close and personal

Noona, Ronald and Sophie

One of the ancients

Ayer’s Rock resort is a purpose built tourist facility that cost in the region of £60m to build. The first tourists arrived in 1958 and the resort itself was developed in the 1980’s. It can cater for 5,000 visitors at a time and is permanent home to about 550 people. The free shuttle bus from the airport gave me a fine tour of what the resort has to offer. A mixture of modern hotels, souvenir shops, a tourist information office and a very good supermarket.

There appeared to be some form of bee keeper’s convention going on as virtually every other person I saw braving the afternoon sun was wearing thick netting over their head. Those that were not heavily netted were all very friendly and waved furiously as the bus went by.

My own accommodation was very much at the budget end of the market – the Outback Pioneer Hotel. Part hotel, part hostel, it was far from luxurious but had everything I needed and best of all I was given a 4 berth room all to myself for my two night stay. Freedom to snore and no mad Germans to shake me awake.

Having parked my backpack in my austere but functional room I covered myself in sun block and set off on foot to explore the resort. I hadn’t gone very far before I too began to wave my arms frantically, as I was beset by a huge number of flies. I made my way hurriedly to the tourist information office and took refuge from both sun and flies in its air conditioned comfort. 15 dollars procured me a sturdy net to cover my head and shoulders and I was able to step outside protected from winged invaders but feeling pretty stupid. The thick net flapping around my face only marginally less annoying than the constant attention of the sodding flies.

All the guidebooks will tell you one thing about Ayer’s Rock Resort – it’s bloody expensive. Being in the middle of nowhere means two things. Firstly, every commodity has to be transported to the resort, adding to the costs. Secondly, once you arrive at the resort you are a captive with little by way of choice when it comes buying essentials. I made my way to the supermarket braced for a shock and clutching a fistful of dollars. But I was pleasantly surprised. The supermarket was well stocked and had special offers just like any other; I was able to buy enough provisions for my stay for under fifty dollars (about £25). Back at the hotel it was much the same as anywhere else I’d stayed, with very welcome cold bottles of beer costing only five dollars.

I did set an alarm for the next morning – for 4.30 am. Despite the early hour I was quick to get out of bed and full of excitement. I had reached the culmination of my Australian adventure and was about to embark on a trek the most iconic feature in Australia – Uluru. I am not religious, but I do love the atmosphere of places of religious significance. In Beverley, the medieval market town where I live, there is a beautiful minster that dates back to the thirteenth century. It is one of the most peaceful and tranquil places that I know. I had huge expectations of this place of spiritual meaning and that was why I had made it the goal of my travel across Australia.

Before the white man came there were over 500 aborigine tribes in Australia and one of them, the Anangu, have been the traditional custodians of Uluru for over 36,000 years. Historically the Anangu were a nomadic people who lived off the land. A remarkable feat when you consider the harshness of the landscape. Astonishingly, members of the tribe were still living the nomadic life as recently as 1968.

Despite such a lengthy association with Uluru, the rock was formally ‘handed back’ to the Anangu in 1985.

By 5.15 I was waiting outside the hotel, with my daypack laden with water and the sky above still dark. My guide for the morning, Sophie, soon arrived in her well equipped Land Rover. We were being joined that morning by just two others: a lovely couple from the Netherlands called Ronald and Noona. Ronald was a retired lawyer and we picked them up at one of the more luxurious hotels. I doubt you could get a beer there for five dollars.

The resort is about 12 miles from Uluru so it only took about 20 minutes to drive there and park up, ready for our 7 mile walk around the base of the rock, or monolith as it is sometimes called. I had always imagined Uluru to be oblong in shape, a bit like a loaf of bread. I thought this as every image I have ever seen shows the rock from the same perspective. In fact, Uluru is a very irregular shape if seen from above.

There is a very good reason why photographs of Uluru always show it from the same viewpoint, as Sophie explained:

‘Uluru is a sacred place to the Anangu people. It is central to their beliefs and certain parts of it are used for sacred ceremonies.

‘Traditionally, there are areas which only the men are allowed to see and areas that only the women can see. As we make our journey the sacred sites are clearly marked and the taking of photographs is strictly forbidden. The reason for this is so that the aborigines do not inadvertently see images of the forbidden sites.’

There are no sacred sites among the facet of the rock that appears in all the photographs. Of course, another reason that all pictures of Uluru look the same could be that they are taken from the designated viewpoint, to which there is easy access by road. Photographing Uluru from another angle would mean venturing into the unforgiving landscape and risking a meeting with one of those 18 species of deadly snakes.

What's that, Skip?

2010-06-04T04:01:00.000-07:00

The sun sets over a familar icon

Flaming June is here and we are on the final leg of our journey together. As I write I am waiting for the 'For Sale' sign to be erected outside my house. The man came yesterday to calculate the energy certificate. A hundred quid a pop and he was only here 15 minutes! I'm definitely adding 'Energy Certificate Bloke' to my list of possible career opportunities. Doing 2 or 3 of those a week would do me nicely.

Just over three weeks until my final challenge - the Humber Bridge Half Marathon. I went on my longest training run to date last Sunday - 10 miles, which I managed in 90 minutes. In fact, that's the furthest I have run in my life. Even when I was a very fit 20 year old I never ventured that far. So, fingers crossed, I'm on target to complete the run in under 2 hours. The weather will be the critical factor.

I'm also running over the bridge this weekend as it is the annual Humber Bridge 10k race. I ran it last year and it was very pleasant. This year it is more of a training run for the big event, although I am aiming to run it in much less that the 56 minutes I took 12 months ago.

So, as promised, let's complete the antipodean travels before I sign off this blog for good.

Cue Jack Bauer voice-over -'Previously on Middle Aged Gapper...'

Our journey to date has taken us from Sydney, home of some very big bats, westwards to Adelaide. After an unsuccessful attempt to swim with dolphins we took the Ghan train north to Alice Springs and are about to venture to our final goal in Australia - Uluru. The story continues...

For the backpacker there are two ways to travel from Alice Springs to Ayer’s Rock Resort, a distance of roughly 300 miles. The first is to take a 6 hour bus ride through the desert. The alternative is a 45 minute plane journey. Both cost about the same, but the bus journey does stop at a camel farm.

Back in Blighty I had opted for the flight. Once I was in the outback I began to regret this decision as I felt I was cheating on the backpack experience. A comment by Emily, the girl on the Ghan, made me wonder if I have might have made the right decision after all.

‘I took the bus out to Uluru. We must have passed about five hundred dead kangaroos on the way.’

‘Five hundred!’ I said, incredulously, sure that I had misheard.

‘At least. They’re all along the road. It’s the people in the big 4 wheel drives with the bull bars on the front. They knock the ‘roos down without even stopping.’

I was brought up in the era of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. How many people would still be trapped down the old mineshaft to this day were it not for Skip’s warnings, conveyed in a weird clicking sound to Sonny Hammond, the young son of the National Park Ranger? To witness mile after mile of dead Skippys was something I was happy to avoid.

Also, the bus left Alice at 7.00 am, whilst the plane did not leave until 2 pm, thus affording me the opportunity for a rare lie-in. My German roommate, Rudolf, however, had other ideas.

At precisely 6.05 am of the day of my departure for Uluru I was shaken awake very violently.

‘What the f...’

‘Excuse me,’ said the agitated Rudolf. ‘I thought I heard an alarm. Are you going on a tour?’

‘No,’ I said sleepily.

‘Ok. Das is gut.’ Rudolf replied and climbed back into his bunk to resume his slumber.

Fully awake, I pondered on what had just happened. I was certain that I had not set any alarms and only Rudolf and I were in the room.

The bane of men’s dormitories is the snoring. There’s always at least one snorer, usually more. For this reason I wear good earplugs whenever I have to share a room. Had I been snoring? Had Rudolf awoken me under the guise of alerting me to a mystery alarm in order to get a decent lie-in himself? Clever old Rudolf.

My German roommate may have dropped off into a deep slumber but I couldn’t. I got up and lazed around the hostel until it was time for the shuttle bus to the airport.

The flight was pleasant and afforded my first glimpse of the distinctive red rock that was the goal of my Australian trek. And not a dead ‘roo in sight.

As the plane made its final approach and I gazed out at the barren landscape below I noticed something odd. We were climbing.

The captain’s voice came over the intercom:

‘Sorry about that everyone. There’s a very strong wind blowing, making it dangerous to land. Hopefully, it will ease off and we can make it down. It might take a few attempts though.’

The next few minutes tested the sickness tablets I had taken to their limits and despite an outside air temperature of 37 degrees centigrade I managed to break into a cold sweat. Our skilful captain managed to touch down on the second pass and I wrenched my clawed hands from the arm rests.

As I stepped uncertainly onto the runway the heat punched me in the face. The surrounding landscape reminded me of the images I had seen of the surface of Mars. Except Mars isn’t plagued by thousands of sodding flies.

One month to go...

2010-05-28T03:44:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wondered where I got the name 'middle aged gapper' it was from a TV show a few years ago that featured 6 people in various stages of middle age who went to various parts of the world to undertake activities normally associated with younger people whilst on the their gap year before or after university. What I found interesting was those who put time and effort into helping others had more rewarding and sometimes life changing experiences than those who opted for the adrenalin junkie activities.

Amazingly, my gap year is almost at an end. Looking back I don't regret a minute of it. I have been so lucky to travel to wonderful places and to have had the health and fitness to enjoy so many activities. But if the opportunity ever arises for another gap year then I will definitely focus on doing something that makes a difference to the life of others.

One of the most touching experiences of my gap year was the visit to an orphanage, near the shores of Lake Bunyoni, Uganda. I am now a sponsor of one of the children - Appa, or Paul as he is now known. Being Paul's sponsor is very rewarding as I receive regular updates and pictures from Crystal who runs the orphanage. I wish I could do more though.

A recent email from Crystal shows how the new classrooms are developing and the building of a new water tank. If you want to find out more about the project then the link is:

http://www.mindfulmarket.com/Home.aspx

I'm training for my first half marathon at the end of June and I am tempted to seek sponsorship in support of the orphanage. I don't like sponsorship though. I hate asking people for money and then there's all the emotional blackmail that so often comes into play. It's just too ugly for me and I believe that people should support charity as they wish and in privacy without pressure.

I have decided though that should my book ever be published then a percentage of any profit will go to support the orphanage. That gives me added incentive to finish the book.

As the gap year ends, so will this blog. It began as a 15 month project and I am now 14 months into it.

My plan is to finish writing about my travels in Australia and New Zealand and publish them on here over the next few weeks.

I always imagined that my year would end with one last journey but I haven't got the appetite for it. I've lost count of the number of beds I've slept in over the last 11 months. It's a lot and my own bed holds a lot of appeal as a result. What I have loved most about this year has been my total freedom. No boss but myself to answer to and definitely no boring and pointless meetings to attend. To send myself out on another journey just because it's on my list is contrary to what I'm about. Having said that, I am planning another trip to Germany for a few days in the summer. To Hamburg this time. And who knows, I might just get the urge to stay longer and take the train to Poland, Switzerland or Czechoslovakia for the hell of it. That is what being a middle aged gapper has been all about. The sheer enjoyment of it.

Live long and prosper.

19

2010-05-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

Apart from posting bits of my supposed book on here I have been very busy over the last three weeks. Well, busy for me that is.

The episodes you may have read on here were edited and submitted to Hull University as the final submission of my degree course in Creative Writing. The classroom part of the playwright course with Hull Truck also came to an end. I now have 3 months to write my play and submit it for feedback and consideration for performance. Exciting stuff.

Not quite so exciting has been the long list of tasks that needed completing around the house. As you may know, my motto is: 'Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after that.' Consequently many tasks (usually the ones that involve a paint brush) that I should have done last year were still outstanding. But they are nearly all done now and my house looks the best it ever has since I and the kids have lived here. And all so someone else can get the pleasure of my labours.

The first estate agent came to visit yesterday and the second one is coming next week, so I expect to have my house on the market in the next couple of weeks. According to my schedule I am about 3 weeks behind, but for once my lethargy and procrastination have worked to my favour as the new government have scrapped the dreaded Home Improvement Packs that all people putting their house up for sale had to pay for. Hurrah!

My staff appraisal went well and I seemed to pretty pleased with myself overall. There was some debate over the 20 challenges I set myself though. In the end I agreed with myself that 19 of them had been achieved, albeit some are a bit dodgy.

Swimming with dolphins just didn't happen, despite two attempts. But my death defying bungee jump in New Zealand more than made up for Flipper's unhelpful attitude.

Appearing on TV didn't quite go to plan either. I had hoped to appear on the Weakest Link but despite getting through the audition the important call hasn't come. Well, I say it hasn't come. I did receive a phone call in last December and when the young man at the end of the phone asked to speak to me I took it to be another of those horrible call centres that try to sell you all kinds of rubbish you don't want. I put the phone down and ever since I have been wondering what that young man was going to say had I let him. Might he have been inviting me to record the show? I'll never know.

Thankfully the Sky cameras broadcast me saying very rude words during the two minutes of silence on Remembrance Sunday, just before kick off at the KC Stadium last November. So I'm claiming that as my TV appearance.

Getting Wainwright photographed with a celebrity was also very difficult. Russell Robertson, a recently retired Aussie Rules football player, did me proud on the plane from Uluru to Alice Springs. He may be a legend in Australia but he's never appeared as the star in the reasonably priced car on Top Gear so that rules him out as a global celebrity. Still, he was a nice bloke and the air stewardesses were virtually throwing their knickers at him so he must have something. Job done.

That's 19 down and 1 to go. The outstanding challenge is the most physically demanding of all them - to run a half marathon in under 2 hours. That may sound easy, but I am not a natural born long distance runner and I have never run anywhere near that distance in my life. Not only that but the course I have chosen is a difficult one. My original hope was to participate in the Great North Run but I missed out on the entry process whilst I was in New Zealand. I chose instead the Humber Bridge Half Marathon. People who have run it tell me it is hard. Especially the 9th mile, which is all uphill. My longest training run to date is around 8 miles and I was pretty tired after that. To run a further mile up a hill would have killed me. Add to that the fact that I am prone to back injuries and both my knees are now feeling the strain of all the running I have done over the past year and it all adds up to one thing. My chances of succeeding in the final task are slim.

I have just 5 weeks left to get myself fit enough for the challenge. Watch this space.

Don't watch it though for the next few days as I am heading off to the Lake District, where, among other things, I will be catching up with the lovely Lynn and Angelina who I met when my son and I took part in an activity holiday in Turkey last summer.

Live long and prosper.

Watery Farts

2010-05-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

Montecatini, is a spa town, where no fewer than 9 spas come to the surface. The place to find them was a large park, about 5 minutes from my hotel.

I sauntered along there on my first morning in town and having meandered aimlessly through the park I came to an interesting, mock renaissance building - all columns and ornate plasterwork set above a cool marble floor.

The entrance fee also allowed me to take the waters. Intrigued I paid my 13 Euro and asked the very attractive lady at the entrance what I did next. I was to take a glass and help myself to the spa waters flowing endlessly into numerous sinks.

The very large auditorium was open to the sky but there was shade around the sides and numerous tables to sit at and relax. People were sitting with their half pint mugs of water and reading the Sunday papers or listening to the music. On a raised stage a piano player and guitarist in suits and ties, played along to yet another very attractive lady who was dressed in an off-one-shoulder chiffon dress whilst singing in a very accomplished and soothing manner. All in all it seemed like a brilliant way to while away a Sunday morning. I took out my holiday reading (Dan Brown, Deception Point), found a shaded table and made myself at home. All I needed now was a refreshing glass of water and I was set.

I took my glass to the spas and began my sampling. ‘Taking the waters’ was interesting. Imagine someone taking a hosepipe and trailing it from the local swimming pool to the above mentioned area of tranquillity. The water already has an unnatural, chemical taste. On its journey between pool and sink various things are added to the water. These appear to consist mainly of rotten eggs and salt. Now take a sip. Sorry, I forgot to mention, the water is also very hot.

As I said people were actually drinking this stuff from half pint glasses. The waters are reputed to bring long life. I drank enough to barely add another 3 minutes to mine. It was horrible.

On further inspection I realised that the spas had different labels: Leopoldina; Regina; and Tettuccio. Presumably from different sources. The pipes the waters flowed from were also marked red and blue – bloody hot and not quite so bloody hot.

I looked for a spa marked 'Lager', but no such luck. So, in the interests of good reporting I started at the left and worked my way along the spas. I discovered that the above words stand for: Ghastly; Disgusting; and Tolerable (in tiny amounts). I took a small amount of the latter and returned to Dan Brown.

What followed was a very pleasant, yet slightly surreal, hour being serenaded by a blonde beauty whilst sipping a mild fart dissolved in warm salt water.

Footnote - That's the first 10,000 words of what is intended to be my book. Or should I say of the first draft of my intended book. What I need to do now is finish the book and then re-write it. I suspect that much of what you have read here over the past 3 weeks will be edited out.

I'm having my staff appraisal meeting with myself later on today. I'll report next time how it went. Fingers crossed - I can be very hard on myself.

Live long and prosper.

Stop, thief!

2010-05-19T00:18:00.000-07:00

The first of my gap year trips was to Tuscany, an area I had not visited previously. In fact I had not been to Italy before, so it was a new country to add to the list. As my flight took me to Pisa on the day after I had left work I had only the vaguest of notions about how I would be spending the first 9 days of freedom. Booking into the Buddhist hotel was a deliberate ploy. I had been to several Buddhist retreats previously and they had always proved to be very relaxing and refreshing. A few days of simply chilling out and adjusting to my new life was needed. It didn’t quite begin as I had hoped.

The flight was smooth enough. I forked out 12 pounds for extra leg room and this afforded me first class status. I had three seats all to myself and the aircrew treated me like a VIP. It was well worth additional cost and got my travels off to a worthy start.

My problems started when I switched to travelling by train as I had three of the damn things to catch. The first one was the shuttle from the airport to Pisa Centrali. The ticket machine was out of order so I boarded the train without a ticket. This prompted me to reach for my phrase book and learn the Italian for 'the machine is broken' (la machinno a rotto, should you ever find yourself in the same situation), as I was sure I would be challenged by some official or other. I wasn't.

I got off the train and made my way down the ramp to the main station. Something was wrong. I went through a mental checklist and suddenly realised I had left my laptop on the overhead luggage rack. Lugging my heavy bag, I hurried back and found with relief that the train was still there. I went back to my seat but the laptop was nowhere to be seen. I searched the train frantically, eventually reaching the driver. Might my laptop have been handed to him?

'Do you speak English?’ I said hurriedly, no time for phrase books.

'No!' he replied curtly.

Panic and fear began to crush me. There was so much on the laptop that I needed, losing it would be a disaster. I tried to think of when I had last backed up my files and calculate the damage. This was an awful way to begin my trip.

Lacking other options, I returned to my seat and looked again. The luggage rack remained empty.

There were two choices. Either someone had nicked my laptop and I could rush through the station and try to find the swine. Or, I could calm down and try to be rational. I took a deep breath.

Italian trains must park overnight at a place where kids with spray paint roam at will, for all the trains I saw had bright graffitti, or ‘tags’ on them. I had noticed that my window was a virulent purple because of the paint outside. When I checked it now, it was clean. Clearly, the computer thief had cleaned the window to throw me off the scent. How dastardly can you get?

Then I noticed a purple window on the opposite side of the train, in a seat very similar to the one I had travelled in. And just above it was a familiar laptop case.

Hot and sweaty I clambered off the train to the relief of a group of watching Italians who were clearly wondering what the hell I was doing rushing up and down the train.

'Ah, computer!' they said as one as understanding dawned. Another word learned.

My next train took me to Lucca, where I had to change again and catch the Florence (Firenze) train.

Getting the hang of things, I soon bought a ticket and worked out that the next train was not for another 40 minutes. Outside the station I found a very small bar where I was able to learn another word, this time the Italian for beer - birra.

With time to spare I made my way to the allotted platform. There was a very nice train there and clearly it hadn’t been left overnight in a skate park as it was almost tag free. The trouble was there was no illuminated sign on the platform to tell if this was the Firenze train and nothing on the front indicate where it was going either. Should I get on and risk it leaving suddenly for destination unknown?

I decided to chance it.

Not only was it the right train, it was air conditioned and I arrived at Montecatini Terme quite fresh. Unfortunately, the 25 minute search for the hotel in the raging afternoon heat soon changed that to a state of being soaked in sweat once more.

My hotel proved to be quiet and spacious and I was afforded the warm welcome I have come to expect from practising Buddhists. My room was light and airy, with a huge balcony. The only downside was the lack of alcohol on the premises. I was dying for a cold birra.

Next time - Taking the waters

Going, Going, Gone....

2010-05-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

For months the counter on my works computer had been counting down the days like an Advent calendar. Now the clock read ‘Zero’ and it was the biggest Christmas Day of my life.

I awoke very early with a mixture of excitement and nerves that I hadn't felt since I was a child. Work was a succession of goodbyes, handshakes and good wishes. It was the last of everything. Even my last meeting didn’t seem quite so boring as usual.

The strangest part was writing reports with recommendations for change that I would not be present to see implemented. My ego wanted to leave behind some form of legacy but I knew that it was like writing my name on the seashore and it would not be long before all trace of me was erased.

I took a last lingering look at the building where I had enjoyed so many happy times and bade a silent farewell to my old life.

Deciding how to leave was something I had given a lot of thought to. Some colleagues have thrown huge parties when they retire. At the other extreme there was a Superintendent who said he was just popping out to the shop on his last day and never came back.

I decided against the big party and I settled for buying lunch at a nice restaurant near the police station for about thirty of the people I had worked with. I wanted it to be my thank you for their care, help and support. The people attending were those that had made an impact on my life whilst working at headquarters – my own staff, the cleaner, people I had worked closely with and those I simply cared about. One friend, Ian, had known me since I joined. Another, Jo, had known me for just over a year and I invited her simply because she always took the time to talk to me and be pleasant when she found me lurking near the coffee machine.

I care about what people are, their qualities and values, more than who they are, their rank or status. Therefore there was a distinct lack of ‘management’ at my farewell lunch. The only senior officer was present was Pat, a lovely man whom I had known since he transferred to the force some years earlier and who was also leaving the following week to take up a new post as Assistant Chief Constable with a southern police force.

Despite the fact that we were in a restaurant and there were other parties present, Pat got up to make a speech that suitably embarrassed me and I was given appropriate middle aged gapper gifts, including The Rough Guide to New Zealand.

I quickly went into the speech I had in my head, making it as humorous as I could by stealing some material from Count Arthur Strong on Radio 4. Then I said what was in my heart and not just lodged in my head by way of preparation.

‘Walking away today is strange feeling. This day has been a long time coming for me and I honestly don’t think I will miss the job. I’m excited about the future. But I will miss the people, because I have been lucky enough to work with wonderful people who have done so much to make my time at headquarters really special. People who mean so much to me. I don’t have time for people who think they are important because they have reached a certain level in the force. What I care about are people with strong values such as honesty, integrity, compassion and decency. And that is why you are all here today. Thank you.’

My voice cracked and the tears I had hoped to avoid filled my eyes.

A few minutes later our lunchtime party began to break up and everyone went back to work. Everyone except me. My daughter took me home and I began my new life.

Next time - Free at last - Italy

The Final Countdown

2010-05-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

Mentally I felt prepared for my final day. I even had my farewell speech lodged in my mind should I be called upon to use it.

I had no idea what my future held. This in itself was intoxicating. I had spent my entire life playing safe and planning ahead. Apart from my divorce, all the changes to my life had been steady and controlled as far as possible. Now I could see roughly 6 months ahead, to the end of the Vietnam trip. Beyond that was just a haze. It was a terrific feeling. Although blue is the colour most usually associated with British police officers, I felt that my career had more than a hint of beige about it.

When people found out that I was studying for a degree in creative writing they naturally assumed that in my thirty years as a cop I had a wealth of exciting experiences logged away and ready to convert into the next best-selling novel. Not so. Like most police officers I have a few tales to tell: the guy who came at me with a knife; a year spent on the miners’ strike; guarding the Pope when he came to York; dealing with sudden deaths; and sundry other tales of human misery that sometimes left their mark upon me. Once I guarded a middle aged bloke in hospital after he had taken a near fatal overdose. His wife had been found dead at the marital home and he was suspected of murder. He was recovering but the paracetamol he had taken could still cause severe liver damage and cause him to die. A doctor imparted this information to the prisoner and I could see that he was visibly shocked by it.

‘So, I could still die?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ replied the doctor, firmly.

As soon as the doctor left the room I asked our friend a few casual questions, just in case he died on my watch. His wife had been found dead in the bath, having being drowned. Was it murder or would he claim it was a crime of passion, a sudden act of violence that was not intended to kill and could be classed as manslaughter? He revealed to me the existence of a letter to his sister that the inquiry team knew nothing about. In the letter he apologised for what he had done. Crucially, the letter was written and posted the day before he killed his wife.

Realising its significance, the sister had not revealed the existence of the letter to the detectives who questioned her about her brother. When confronted she duly produced the letter and it was a vital piece of evidence in securing a conviction for murder and a mandatory life sentence.

I received a bollocking from a Detective Sergeant working on the case for talking to the prisoner.

‘You should have left it to the CID,’ he chided.

As stories go it’s not a bad one and I am sure most cops could tell you very similar ones. It’s not going to get me any invitations as an after dinner speaker though. Unlike some of my more colourful police colleagues who have endless tales to tell about their exploits in the CID or the Regional Crime Squad, taking out whole gangs of well organised criminals or tracking murderers to the far side of the globe.

I observed that the officers who held entire crowds enthralled with their anecdotes were also the ones who simply could not leave the police. Many had foregone their marriage, sometimes more than one, to give their all to the job they were passionate about and seemingly couldn’t live without.

Compared to such living legends, my career was very bland indeed. By leaving and throwing myself into an uncertain future I saw that for once I was in a position to make my life more colourful. Whether I was being bold or reckless didn’t matter. I felt very good about myself.

A visit to the photographer made me realise just how far I had already come in preparation for my big day and the new life that lay ahead.

I have a picture of myself in my uniform as a very young police officer. I had it taken professionally as a Christmas present for my proud parents. I decided that it would be a good idea to have a similar photo taken of me in my Chief Inspector’s uniform. I also opted to have a few photos of me in casual dress whilst I was there.

The photo shoot went well until I changed into my casual clothes. I put on some trousers I had bought only a year previously. They hung off me like a clown’s costume and were a good 6 inches too big in the waist.

When I got home I went through my wardrobe, threw out most of my clothes and took myself off on a shopping trip to buy new, trendy clothes that fitted me.

As my final day at work approached, I felt like a new man. Or at least an old one re-cycled.

Next time - Goodbye to my old life

The Missing Challenges

2010-05-12T01:26:00.000-07:00

Making the list of 20 goals was the hardest part of the exercise. They had to be things that I had not done before, that offered some challenge in order to achieve and which supported my mission statement.

Many challenges on my list would be on most people’s list of things to do before they die, or reach a certain age. A couple of the more common ones are missing, however. The first of these is ‘Make a parachute jump’. This is not on my list because I have already done it. Twice in fact.

If parachute jumping is on your list then may I give you a tip? Opt for a tandem jump. In this way you can both scare yourself shitless and yet relax at the same time as someone else has the difficult task of ensuring that you find the drop zone and land safely. Jumping from a static line as I did means you have all of those problems. Think about it this way – when you first learned to drive a car how much sightseeing did you do? Did you ever have time to admire the world around you? No, you didn’t. You were too busy trying to focus on three things at once, wipe the cold sweat of fear out of your eyes and avoid a nasty accident. And it’s exactly the same with parachuting, except it’s in three dimensions and the brakes are a bit dodgy.

For my first parachute jump I got out of the plane at 2,000 feet, my canopy opened and I didn’t have a sodding clue where I was. Nothing on the ground matched the map I had in my head. Fortunately there was a one way radio strapped to my chest that allowed an instructor on the ground to relay messages to me, such as ‘pull your left toggle’. It was a nerve-wracking few minutes where I was just a puppet with my life in somebody else’s hands. But in a strange way I enjoyed it and actually thought that it could be the hobby for me.

Back I went to the airfield a few weeks later to clock up jump number two. This didn’t go quite so well.

When I did my first jump it was after a day’s training and all the instructions were fresh in my mind. Several sleeps later I had forgotten nearly everything. Still, not to worry, all I had to do was listen to the voice coming out of my chest. All went well until I was about 100 feet off the ground and ready to land. I misunderstood the instruction given to me, put myself into a spin, lost control and collided with a tree. I was very lucky to escape with just a badly sprained ankle.

I never returned to the airfield. Apart from my dented confidence I had wrecked a thousand pounds’ worth of parachute and I didn’t fancy the bill if I showed my face again.

The other challenge you might expect to see on the list is bungee jumping and my reason for not including it is linked to my parachute experience.

The hardest part of a solo parachute jump is leaving the aircraft. It’s just not natural. There you are enjoying the scenery and next minute you’re being told to leave the aircraft. Sitting in the doorway, legs dangling outside the plane, with the slip stream sucking at you; it takes an awful lot of courage to hurl yourself out into the void. I had that courage twice, but no longer.

The idea of a bungee jump brings on that same fear. I imagine myself inching out onto the jump platform with everybody watching. As the seconds tick away and the time comes to jump I know I will be frozen with fear and have to be helped back to safety and ritual humiliation.

I will do most things, but I have always said that I will never do a bungee jump.

Next time - The last day approaches

20 Challenges

2010-05-10T00:51:00.000-07:00

My mind made up, I ‘put my ticket in’, which is police slang for submitting my resignation notice. Actually, resigning is only part of the process. I was required to submit no fewer than five different forms to ensure that my retirement goes smoothly and the well earned lump sum appeared in my bank account on the appointed day. The last form contained the chilling phrase:

‘Are you really sure you want to do this? By signing this you are invoking your karma and effectively setting the date of your death.’

Pushing aside all thoughts of my early demise, I signed it anyway and began to plan my future.

My last day as a police officer would be Wednesday 29th July, 2010. Thirty years to the day since I proudly put on my uniform for the first time as a fresh faced 21 year old sporting a very nice moustache. With the days of annual leave I have left and so called ‘Reward Leave’ (extra days leave given each year as a reward for not going off sick) I was able to bring my last day in that same uniform forward to Friday 3rd of July. The die was cast.

By this time I had a pretty good idea of what I want to do with my gap year and I gave my credit card a good bashing on the internet travel and airline sites.

Not wishing to waste time I decided to embark on my first trip the day after leaving work. I had never been to Italy so I booked flights to Pisa with a view to seeing Tuscany. As an added twist I arranged to stay in a hotel run by Buddhists in a small town called Montecatini. I reckoned on 9 days being enough for me to chill out and acclimatise to life beyond work.

Allowing for a few days at home I followed this trip by renting a cottage on the edge of the English Lake District village of Grasmere, in the hope that I could entice all three of my children to join me at some point during the week.

Allowing for another couple of weeks at home, I then booked a much more challenging break by arranging for my youngest son and me to travel to Turkey for a week’s activity holiday.

I was on a roll and decided to go for the big one. I booked myself onto a guided two week tour through East Africa in mid September, beginning in Kenya, travelling north to Uganda and ending in Rwanda. Had it not been for the kind people of the Police Federation who negotiated on my behalf for an increased lump sum when I retired, my plans would end there.

As it was I had enough time and resources to go for one more epic trip before the year was out. I booked flights to Hong Kong in November and arranged to stay there for a couple of days before heading south to Vietnam where I would join another guided tour in Hanoi and journey south to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is still commonly known.

I had a tentative plan to visit Australia and New Zealand in the New Year, but I decided that I have done enough credit card bashing for the time being.

My choices of destinations were not random. Each trip represented something special to me, from time with my children to seeking out the Big 5 on the Maasai Mara. My gap year wasn’t going to be about visiting places across the planet and looking at them. It was about experiencing all those places have to offer.

One thing I learned from all those tedious meetings I attended as a Chief Inspector was the importance of strategic and tactical planning. Most large organisations these days set themselves aspirational goals or create mission statements. Every police force has its own set of goals, usually four or five of them. If you were to compare the goals of each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales you would see that they are amazingly similar. There is a good reason for this. Although the Police Service is apolitical it is ruled by the government of the day who set the agenda for all police forces and measure success or failure by means of performance targets. This is a great way to waste taxpayers money on endless meetings and inspections. And all so the ruling party can tell you come election time that under their tenure they have cut reported crime by X%, or put Y number of police officers back on the streets. And when you read those statements don’t forget that they are based on data supplied by people like me. Yes, me! You can’t have read this far without realising that I can be prone to embroider the truth now and again. I never went to a meeting with Home Office officials without first visiting the stores for a large supply of smoke and several mirrors.

Casting cynicism aside for a minute, the process is not all bad. Having been set their targets and defined their goals, chief police officers then create a strategy in order to achieve them. Typically, this will require allocating resources to the so called ‘Three Pillars of Policing’ – incident response, crime investigation and neighbourhood policing. What underpins the strategy are the tactics used to carry it out. This is the work done by the police staff at the sharp end to ensure that you and I can live our lives in safety and receive a good service (or not).

The hours I have spent locked in mind numbing meetings had not been a total waste of time as I realised that I could apply the principles I had learned to help me gain the most from my gap year experience. I even decided to hold monthly staff appraisal meetings with myself to check on my progress.

After one or two coats of thinking about it I came up with my Middle Aged Gapper Mission Statement, my strategy and a list of 20 tactical goals to be achieved during my year. Here they are:

Mission Statement

To travel extensively, taking on challenges and meeting people that stimulate my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual growth.

Strategy

To visit at least 10 countries that I have not visited previously.

Tactical Goals

1. See the Big 7 safari animals in the wild
2. Appear on TV
3. Take an epic train journey
4. Go white water rafting
5. Catch a big fish
6. Watch the sun rise at Uluru
7. Take a dip in a hot spring
8. Climb a glacier
9. Swim with dolphins
10. Get a Maori tattoo
11. Go paragliding
12. Photograph a whale
13. Climb Sydney Harbour Bridge
14. Fly in a hot air balloon over the Maasai Mara
15. Photograph Wainwright with a celebrity
16. Take a Turkish bath
17. See the Northern Lights
18. Come face to face with mountain gorillas
19. Visit a Buddhist temple
20. Run a half marathon in under 2 hours

Next time - advice on parachuting.

First Class Dining (Part 2)

2010-05-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

We switched south to York and then west through the Aire valley as we ventured towards the highlight of our journey.

Construction of the Settle to Carlisle railway line began in 1869 and took 7 gruelling years to complete. This was the age of the Navvies, the hardy labourers, mainly Irish, who carved out Britain’s railway and canal networks by brute force. Entire families lived in camps and small townships on the bleak Yorkshire moorside. Not only was the work dangerous but the conditions meant that the threat of diseases like smallpox was never far away. 6,000 navvies were used to build the 72 mile long route with its 14 tunnels and 20 viaducts. A total of 201 people died during construction and of these 110 were children.

The railway came under the threat of closure by Maggie Thatcher in the 1980’s. Fortunately the Minister for Transport of the day, Michael Portillo managed to persuade her not to axe the line. Mr Portillo, one of the few politicians that I actually admire, showed a great deal of foresight and since he saw off the threat in 1989 the line has gone from strength to strength. 750,000 now use the line annually, and not just day trippers like me, but a growing number of commuters too.

Our diesel locomotive made light work of the journey, keeping up a steady but sedate speed that enabled me to marvel at the verdant landscape outside my window as the rugged Yorkshire Dales gave way to the alluring fells of the Lake District. Had I travelled by steam train then the enginemen would have had their work cut out to keep up the same pace. The 16 mile climb from Settle to Blea Moor was known as ‘the long drag’ by train drivers, requiring them to shovel a constant supply of coal into the firebox for the steam locomotive to maintain speed up the near constant 1 in 100 incline.

No such effort for me, thankfully. Instead I got to graze on Elevenses as a world of poetic beauty slid by the window.

We arrived in Carlisle for a three hour stop-over in the early afternoon. I headed for the Tourist Information office full of intention to visit whatever tourist hotspots were on offer. It was a bright, sunny day so I decided to picnic in the park at the northern end of the city. After a filling tuna-mayo sandwich and lashings of ginger beer, the soporific effects of the train journey began to take effect and was not long before one man and his Hull City gnome were snoozing on the grass. So much for seeing the sights.

There was just enough time for Wainwright to pose for pictures in front of Carlisle Castle before we made our way back to the railway station. It was here that I made my first discovery of the Wainwright Effect.

I helped Wainwright to arrange himself into various positions around the waiting train whilst I snapped away with my camera. As I did so I noticed people stopping to stare at my small friend. Everyone smiled and was somehow gladdened by the sight of the Black and Amber diminutive footballer. Strangely though, no one paid me much attention.

Wainwright and I had never worked out the terms of our relationship, but this trip made it very clear. Wainwright is the star and I am merely his minder and personal assistant. It is a role that I am very comfortable with.

I decided to test Wainwright’s winning ways and took him to the diesel locomotive. I had to wait while a genuine enthusiast quizzed the drivers on something technical or maybe he just asked: ‘Can I have a go?’ When he sloped away, shoulders slumped, I took my chance and poked my head into the oily cabin.

The two drivers eyed me with all the enthusiasm of jaded rock stars, tired of constant attention. Jaded or not, my question was one which I am sure they had never been asked before:

‘Excuse me. Can my gnome have his picture taken in your cab?’

A moment of puzzlement gave way to broad smiles as Wainwright was enthusiastically lifted aboard. He even got to pose looking out of the window whilst ‘driving’ the train. I sensed a certain amount of reluctance as the wee feller was returned to me. I had the decency to wait until I was out of sight of the cab before I wiped the grubby fingerprints off the hitherto pristine gnome.

We returned via the Tyne valley, the Tees valley and back along the Esk valley. That's a lot of valleys and some stunning scenery. We even caught sight of The Angel of the North, which was a first for me.

I’d booked myself into a Bed and Breakfast in Whitby for the night, so as the sun set and the superb four course dinner was served, I washed it all down with a decent bottle of red wine.

Could life be any better than this? Fine food, fine wine, the sun setting over an ever changing vista of fields and rivers, the amiable chatter of Anne, Mark and Clive and the companionship of a resin gnome. If that is what retirement is about then I certainly wanted more of it.

Next time - The 20 Challenges

First Class Dining (Part 1)

2010-05-06T01:15:00.000-07:00

Moving from being a Chief Inspector to a civilian in the same post within the space of 24 hours was a one-off opportunity. Once I left the organisation I would be on my own with no easy way back to the life of meetings about meetings and deceiving the Home Office. Despite the presence of Wainwright I still felt unnerved at the thought of walking away from a secure future into one that could lead to me having to stack supermarket shelves in order to support my youngest son at college, my daughter at university, my ageing father, my ageing dog and a garden gnome. I settled upon a plan of testing the water. I would undertake a small adventure to test both my and Wainwright’s mettle for around the world voyaging.

Whilst I am not an ‘enthusiast’ I do love to travel by train. It encourages a special level of laziness that is normally reserved for Christmas and bank holidays. I often buy a cheap ticket to London for a day out visiting the art galleries, walking by the river or mooching around Greenwich. On a good day the journey takes less than 3 hours and by the time I’ve switched between trips to the buffet bar, reading and gazing out of the window whilst plugged into my iPod the journey seems to be over much too soon.

The world has some truly lengthy train journeys to offer – the Indian Pacific across Australia, the Re-Unification Express up and down Vietnam and the Rocky Mountaineer through Canada, to name but a few. All of these interested me as potential gap year journeys. There is nothing to match these trips for distance in Great Britain, but there are plenty of iconic rail journeys to be found.

A bit of web surfing put me in touch with West Coast Railways and I booked Wainwright and me onto a full day trip that would take us on the most scenic railway line in England.

Our journey began at Whitby railway station, one cold Saturday morning in early June. Sadly, the locomotive that pulled us along was an old diesel and not the steam train I would have preferred for complete perfection. Once on board Wainwright posed for pictures in the deep seated luxury of the Pullman carriage. I had opted to treat myself to the First Class Dining Experience to ease myself gently into the world of long distance rail travel.

As the train left the station at 7.14 am prompt there were just two other people sharing our carriage. I soon learned that they are a married couple celebrating a 60th birthday by treating themselves to this special day out.

Slowly the train eased its way out of Whitby and along the track of the North York Moors Railway, a stretch of railway that is operated by a bunch of enthusiasts who lovingly maintain the track between Whitby and Pickering and the ancient and noble locomotives and carriages that glide along it. More passengers joined us at every stop until the whole train was alive with excited and animated people.

Wainwright and I were joined at our table by Anne, Mark and Clive, who were also celebrating a birthday. Sitting in close proximity to someone for the length of rail journey is a hit and miss affair with the potential to make or mar the pleasure. My companions definitely added to the whole experience with their good humour and extensive knowledge of trains, the route, history and just about everything else of interest. Clive, the nephew of Anne and Mark was the real railway buff of the trio.

Apart from Wainwright, my other companion on this journey was the excellent and apposite Eleven Minutes Late, by Matthew Engel. It is a book that describes the author’s journey along the length of the British railway system from Penzance to Thurso and at the same time delves into the deep, and sometimes confusing, history of our national rail network.

‘That cover is wrong,’ said Clive with authority.

I stared at the book cover in question. It is a pleasing watercolour that depicts the idyllic scene of a well dressed couple and a young child waiting on a railway platform circa 1950. A blue suited guard has his red flag aloft and his whistle to his mouth as a steam train makes its way majestically into the station.

‘Is it?’ I said, unable to spot anything wrong with the scene before me.

‘The train is on the wrong track,’ continued Clive. ‘A passenger train always approaches a station so that its left hand side is presented to the platform.’

For the remainder of the day I seek verification of Clive’s statement and he proves to be spot on. I discover later that Matthew Engel himself acknowledges the point in the book, pleading for the reader’s indulgence in a little artistic licence in an effort to avoid a deluge of hate mail from vengeful railway enthusiasts.

Piping hot coffee and buttered Arbroath kippers made for a leisurely start to the morning as our outward route took us through the Esk valley to Middlesbrough. A few weeks earlier both Middlesbrough FC and Newcastle United had been relegated from the Premiership after tense battles for survival. The Riverside Stadium was wearing a black arm-band. I didn't approve of Wainwright singing: 'Down with the Geordies, you've gone down with the Geordies’, as we passed it.

Next time - the journey to Carlisle

Faster, fitter, further.

2010-05-04T02:27:00.000-07:00

Also around this time I decide to get fitter. The 30 yard walk from my desk the coffee machine is the most exercise I got each day. I had become so fat that one day a young uniformed officer approached me in the obvious belief that I had the physique of a Police Federation Representative, or Fed Rep as they are known. Before I could stop him the constable reeled off a long list of wrongdoings on his shift. It was a fascinating tale involving a tangled web of love triangles, sexual deviancy, bullying, sexism, homophobia and abuse of a police dog.

I listened intently whilst making copious notes. This stuff would be dynamite when I got round to writing my novel. Satisfied that I had drained every salacious detail out of the whistle-blower I shook his hand and left him with the standard Fed Rep’s promise:

‘Leave it with me. I’ll look into it and get back to you.’

Naturally, I was tempted to maintain the pretence of being a Fed Rep. In just half an hour I had been privy to some really juicy gossip. There must be dozens more officers with tales to tell. Enough for several novels and maybe even a screenplay.

Inviting as this thought was, the meeting had also served to tell me it was time to do something about my lack of fitness and weight problem. I was already formulating a mental list of challenges for my gap year and some of them would require me to be fit and agile. And then there was the question of my karma.

I had never in my life been in possession of a large pot of money. Life had somehow conspired to ensure that whenever I reached a situation where I might begin to acquire wealth some unforeseen circumstance would come along and deprive me of it. Happily, it worked the other way too. At times when I was faced with huge financial pressures such as when I got divorced or when my children were young and I had large bills for childcare, the money just seemed to be there and I never got into debt. The laws of the cosmos seemed to be somehow in control of my bank balance.

When I retired I would receive a very nice lump sum. More money than I had possessed in my entire life. How would the cosmos react? To me the answer was obvious. I would die.

Not only was the clock ticking down to retirement, it was ticking down to death too. I would receive the cheque for my lump sum, cheer loudly and promptly drop dead. How annoying was that?

Something had to be done. The cosmos must be cheated. I had to reduce the chances of imminent death.

I’d successfully lost weight before but the cycle was always the same. I’d join a local slimming club; realise I was the only man there; decide which woman I’d most like to have sex with (if she reached her target weight, obviously); try hard for 3 months; get bored of hearing how Tracey had managed to lose another pound this week; go to the class just to get to get weighed; decide that four quid week just to get weighed is a bit steep; weigh myself and save four quid a week; gradually put back all the weight I’d lost plus a bit more for luck.

To break the cycle I opted to go for an online slimming club. One that allowed me to type away ad infinitum to my personal diet guru about how I’d managed to lose a pound this week, or how it’s been an emotional time and I’ve been comforting eating and expect advice and counselling in return. One that not only provides me with a menu every week but even converts it into a shopping list.

The downside is you receive messages from fellow fatties with names like ‘Can’tstopeatingchips’ or ‘BurgersRme54’. But if you ignore them or lie about how easily the pounds are falling off they soon go away and leave you alone.

In my experience dieting, or healthy eating, will only take you so far. The pounds drop off steadily and then an impasse is reached. There’s only one way past it. Exercise.

I have never liked gyms. According to a well known medical magazine, 80 percent of people with gym memberships don’t use them. There must be a universal law that says the desire to stay in and watch TV is inversely proportional to the frequency with which the gym is visited, until staying in reaches 100% and visits equal zero. And yet whenever I have gone to the gym there’s always someone on the machine I want to be on.

But what if you can have both? Stay in by the TV and go to the gym? Say hello to the Wii Fit. What better way to gain the physique of an Olympic athlete than by pretending to hula-hoop or by ski-jumping in your own front room? Except of course it doesn’t quite work that way and breaking out the balance board for a yoga session soon becomes as difficult and repetitive as going to the gym.

Fortunately, I had an epiphany. I was jogging around my front room whilst my on screen avatar made his way through a nice park, waving at other joggers and friendly little dogs, when I had a thought. ‘What if I opened my front door and took this out on the street?’ So I did. And it was fun. And pretty soon I was doing it four times a week and beginning to feel like the younger me.
I even set myself a challenge. To run my first 10k race. And I did and the emotion of that achievement brought tears to my eyes as I crossed the finishing line in 56 minutes. So I entered another race and another. Until I was crossing the line in 52 minutes, the theme tune to Rocky playing in my head as I sprinted home.

I lost so much weight in the process that when my young whistle-blowing friend called by my office to see how his Fed Rep was getting on he didn’t recognise me. I told him the person he was looking for had been suspended from duty after being caught giving out confidential information from the Police National Computer in return for pies.

Next time - First Class Dining on the Settle to Carlisle line.

Wainwright

2010-04-29T00:45:00.000-07:00

It was around this time that I was joined on my quest by my faithful companion, Wainwright.

I can’t claim to be a life-long fan of Hull City, or the Tigers as they are known locally. In fact I can’t even claim to be a life-long fan of football. As a young Bobby I would be sent to control the crowds at the Tiger’s ancient ground, Boothferry Park. As far as I could see, and I made numerous studies of this, there was not one single person in that stadium who was enjoying themselves. Certainly not me, and I was being paid to be there. Maybe that’s just a reflection of the northern way of life. We’re only happy when we’re miserable.

My attitude towards the Tigers changed once they acquired the KC Stadium. My children were teenagers and as a treat we went to see City versus Mansfield at a time when the team were doing well in what was then Division 3. City lost, 1 – 0, but from the time I walked into that splendid ground, dazzled by the green of the pitch, I was hooked and so were my children. The brilliant stadium, the jewel in the crown of a city in need of hope and dreams, changed everything, even the gloomy atmosphere I remembered so well. I’ve been going back ever since.

At the time of writing, Hull City are about to be relegated from the Premier League. By the time you read this they could be facing the challenge of the Champions League, or, more likely, cold, wet Tuesday evenings playing the likes of Macclesfield in the Johnstone’s - I’d sooner watch paint dry - trophy.

One sunny February afternoon in 2009 I made a trip that neither I nor any other Tigers’ fan ever expected to make. I went to Stamford Bridge to see City play Chelsea in the Premier League. It was a surprisingly close game that City could have won if they only had a striker on the pitch. It ended 0 – 0 and Phil Scolari paid the price the next day when he was sacked as Chelsea Coach.

But the real revelation that day lurked in the Chelsea merchandise shop. Among all the mugs, scarves and foam pointy fingers was a gnome, dressed in the Chelsea strip with his booted foot resting on a football. ‘We want one!’ cried the Hull City fans and three months later the enterprising manufacturer duly obliged with a limited edition of 500.

As soon as I read about the gnomes in the local press I knew I had to have one. It was perfect. If Tony Hawks could tour Ireland with a fridge then I could tour the world with a Hull City Garden Gnome. Images of the two us being feted on our travels and being forced to politely accept free drinks and accommodation filled my head. With a gaily coloured gnome in tow I might even get laid.

Not everyone shared my enthusiasm when I nipped out one lunch time to the Hull City shop and came back with my new best friend.

‘You paid fifteen quid for that?’ said the scoffer number one.

‘Yes.’

‘What you gonna call it?’ said scoffer number two.

‘Wainwright,’ I replied. ‘He’s called Wainwright.’

‘Why?’

‘That would be telling,’ I said, walking off clutching the little chap protectively to my chest, whilst eyeing a sneering sergeant who was making a move to free his extendable baton. And to this day only I know why Wainwright is Wainwright. And it’s got nothing at all to do with walks in the Lake District.

Next Time - As fat as a Fed Rep

2010-04-28T01:51:00.000-07:00

As the Yiddish proverb says: Men make plans and God laughs.

By law police officers cannot join a union and have no right to strike. Most cops do belong to a body that will represent them at a national and local level. For those up to the rank of Chief Inspector this is the Police Federation. I have never been a great fan of the Federation, mainly because I have always seen it as being ineffective and its elected representatives always appear to be keener on pies, pints and petty politics than they are on supporting their members. But a year before I was due to retire the Federation announced an agreement with the government that would have a huge effect upon my pension package.

When they retire most cops take a pension that allows them an annual income that is half of their final salary and a lump sum of money. What the Federation did was to agree a new formula for the lump sum. When information about this new formula appeared casually in my email inbox I had to read it several times to grasp what it was telling me. Then I grabbed my calculator and worked out how the changes would affect me. My lump sum would be increased by over £35,000! God bless the Federation. The pies are on me.

Naturally, I went over my sums numerous times to find the catch but there wasn’t one. I was to be given the equivalent of a small lottery win without even asking for it. Sod taking a three month break when I left work, I now had the finances to take a whole year off and travel more extensively than I had hoped. More than that, my unearned windfall put off the day of reckoning. The day when I would find out just how difficult it is to earn money outside of the police.

For those outside the police service wanting to get in the system is hugely unfair. For those inside and wanting to stay inside it is very rewarding. ‘Civilianisation’ is an ugly word for senior police officers and their political masters. It smacks of policing on the cheap and ‘jobs for the boys (and girls)’. Nonetheless all police forces face strong financial constraints that require them to find ways to save money and be more efficient. As I neared the end of my service the new answer to every chief constable’s prayer was ‘Business and Workforce Modernisation’. This is a process of examining police functions to determine which of them actually require the use of police powers and which can be done by people who do not carry a warrant card.

For example, only police officers have the power to arrest a person but no such powers are required to investigate crimes, interview suspects or take witness statements. Good news for Dennis Waterman and James Bolam as it provided the perfect vehicle to revive their careers by playing parts as ex-cops coming out of retirement in New Tricks.

It was also good news for me. I had never been much of a cop and by the end of my service I was no kind of cop at all. My job title was ‘Business Change Manager’, which meant a lot of those tedious meetings I mentioned earlier but also allowed me to get home in time for The Weakest Link and to see Hull City play on a Saturday afternoon. My stab vest was in pristine condition and my canister of CS, well past its Spray by date, was untouched.

Requiring not even the merest hint of a police power, my job was ripe for ‘modernisation’. I could leave as a police officer one day and come back to the same job as a civilian the next. Not only would I still get my pension but I would receive a decent salary as well. By my calculations I reckoned I would be earning about £12,000 a year more than I already was, with no mortgage to pay. That’s quite an incentive.

There was just one problem. I didn’t have the slightest desire to be the Business Change Manager for a day longer than I had to.

A good many of my friends and colleagues had left the police by the revolving door and were now very comfortable financially having swapped their uniform for a suit and tie. Whilst that was their choice and I could see the logic, to me they were avoiding the test of finding out who they really were. Choosing financial security over a chance to take on a new challenge. Other colleagues simply refused to leave and clung on to their police posts and often the status it afforded them.

As my career dwindled like sand in an hour glass I was very vociferous about my ability to leave behind the job security comfort blanket and step out into the brave new world beyond policing. But as I reached my last six months before becoming eligible to retire I began to regret the boldness and bravado of my words. People would slap me on the back and say:

‘Can’t be long until you retire, Bry? Gosh, you’re a brave man to take off into the wild blue yonder like that. Good luck to you.’

I just smiled and thought: ‘Oh shit.’

Maybe there was a lot to be said for a nice income and a comfortable life. It certainly beats taking photos from a very long ladder. Sorry, Keith from Scunthorpe.

Next time - Joined by Wainwright

The Unsettlement Course

2010-04-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

Making the Break

The hotel is one of the smarter ones on the outskirts of Hull. The kind that entertain any organisation in need of a spacious room, a flip chart, a buffet lunch and a scattering of sturdy pens bearing the hotel logo. In my 28 years as a police officer I have been trapped in numerous situations like this. Rising through the ranks to reach the giddy heights of Chief Inspector, the meetings have become more frequent, longer and increasingly pointless. The Policing Plan, The Efficiency Plan, The Strategic Plan, The Annual Budget, The Police Performance Assessment Framework. Every one guaranteed to drive up my desire to sneak out at the next coffee and chunky-biscuit break and escape to a museum, art gallery or the local suicide spot. Except that I can’t, because hotels like this are always carefully situated so that the nearest place of remote interest is the Toyota saleroom 800 yards down the unpaved road.

But this event is different. I have been waiting for it for years.

It is July 2007 and I am sitting around a very large table in the midst of ten police officer colleagues. Most of them are accompanied by their partners.

This is day one of a re-settlement course. A two day event to help officers who are nearing retirement to make the transition into the next phase of their lives. All the cops present are male, a reflection of the force demographic back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when we joined the Police.

In the time-honoured fashion we announce who we are, give a little of our background and explain our plans for the future.

As the introductions mount up I’m hit by an astonishing realisation. No one has a clue about what they want to do when they retire. Well, apart from Keith from Scunthorpe that is. He wants to run his own business where he takes photographs from an extendable ladder.

‘Aerial photography without all the expense of a plane or helicopter’.

Keith from Scunthorpe even hands round some business cards he’s had printed.

I admire his vision. Sadly, to this day I have yet to find the need of an aerial view of anything. Sorry, Keith from Scunthorpe.

Then it’s my turn to introduce myself.

‘Good morning. For those that don’t know me, I’m Bryan. I intend to retire in two years. I’m a Chief Inspector and I work at Force Headquarters.

‘I’m divorced and have three teenage children who live with me.

‘I have a very clear vision of what I want to do when I retire. Firstly, I have no intention of coming back as a civilian worker. I want a complete change.

‘For the first three months I am going travelling. Then I’ll take on little jobs and see how I go. I’ve done a bit of am-dram in the past and ideally I would like to work as a TV and film Extra. I am studying for a degree in creative writing at Hull University and for years I’ve dreamed of being a writer. I’d sooner do something I really love for little money than do something I hate just because it pays well.’

I sit down to silence. People are staring.

All of the other police officers present are constables and will receive pensions much less than mine. Their looks say:

‘That’s easy for you, clever git, on your bloated Chief Inspector’s pension. We’ll have to get real jobs to get by.’

The wives, on the other hand, are staring at their husbands with looks that say:

‘How many times did I tell you to pass your promotion exams? You could have got promoted, bought that nice holiday home in Spain we always talked about and got a whacking great pension. If this idiot can get to Chief Inspector, anyone can!’

I know that’s a lot to put into a look, but I swear that’s what they were all saying. Trust me; I used to be a police officer.

Next time - The Police Federation - Who ate all the pies?

The Adventures of a Middle Aged Gapper

2010-04-26T00:56:00.000-07:00

As promised, over the next 2 weeks I will publish on here the opening of my book - Adventures of a Middle Aged Gapper. This is also my final submission to Hull University for my Mickey Mouse degree in Creative Writing. Despite my belief that this is not a real degree I am, much to my own amazement, in line to receive First Class Honours (surely that proves my point?). It all depends on this last piece.

If you have any comments to make or constructive criticism then please feel free use the comments box. I will then mention you in my very long acceptance speech when the university laud me with honours. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration since I'm not even going to the awards ceremony. But any comments will be appreciated.

And, if there are any literary agents out there reading this, I am still agent-less and welcome any inquiries.

Here we go -

THE ADVENTURES OF A MIDDLE AGED GAPPER

Preface

Andy, our instructor, guides the inflatable raft to the side of the Kaituna River in preparation for the big one - Tutea Falls.

‘Around this bend is the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. The drop is seven metres. If you listen carefully to my instructions and do as I say then there’s a pretty good chance that we will make it.’

At this moment I must admit that there is a certain amount of adrenalin pumping around my body and a nagging fear that won’t go away.

‘If you do fall out of the raft it will feel like you are in a washing machine. Roll yourself into a tight ball until you surface,’ says Andy seriously. ‘You don’t want to hit the rocks.’

All I can picture is myself tumbling around in the crashing waters at the base of the fall, with no idea which way is up and praying that I don’t get snagged under a boulder.

‘Everyone on their feet while I ask the god of the river to protect us.’ Andy is not a Maori but from somewhere he plucks a stirring tribal incantation, calling for our safe delivery while his crew waiver unsteadily in the large raft.

White water rafting is one of the twenty challenges that I set myself for my gap year. In the preceding six months I have already rafted in Turkey and even passed through mighty Grade 5 falls with names like ‘Overtime’ and ‘The Bad Place’ on a twenty mile journey down the River Nile in Uganda. This is one challenge that is well and truly ticked off the list. According to my own rules I don’t need to be here and yet it was the first activity I booked once I had arranged my flight to New Zealand. I’m a tanned, fit, adrenalin junkie. A long way from the overweight guy who used to sit at his desk trying to muster enthusiasm for the latest performance figures and measuring out his days by visits to the coffee machine.

‘This is the Silver Fern,’ says Andy, grabbing some leaves from the river bank. ‘It is the symbol of New Zealand. It’s what the All Blacks wear on their shirts. See, it is green on top and silver underneath? Here, Becky, take the leaf and throw it on the water.’

Becky is a very blond and very attractive American. Like just about everyone else in the raft she is about 30 years younger than me. Becky is a real gapper.

‘If the leaf lands silver side up then it is a sign of good fortune,’ explains Andy. ‘If not, I will have my work cut out.’

Becky throws the leaf to the surface of the river and nine pairs of eyes follow its progress intently. The silver fern sinks without trace.

Shit.

Andy looks genuinely troubled. I don’t think that was meant to happen.

‘Okay, guys, no problem,’ says Andy with forced enthusiasm. ‘Let’s go anyway.’

I resume my position at the front of the raft, alongside my friend Pete who asked if he could join me on my New Zealand trip.

Urged on by Andy we paddle around the bend, Pete and I setting the stroke rate towards the roaring falls.

‘Keep paddling!’ cries Andy, his voice nearly drowned out by the sound of rushing water. I force myself to obey as the front of the boat edges out over the drop.

‘Get down!’ screams Andy.

There’s an ‘ecstasy of fumbling’ as Wilfred Owen put it, describing soldiers in a gas attack. I try to squeeze myself into the space beside Pete, at the same time grabbing the guide rope around the raft and grasping my paddle tightly. Trying to do three things at once whilst my stomach churns more than the river proves too much. I snag my right foot on a toe hold on the floor and begin to panic. In what seems like slow motion, I shake my foot free and get down just as the raft tilts and falls into the crashing water. I take a one last deep breath as the foaming water swallows up the boat. My entire world turns white.

Next time - A very unsettling re-settlement course.

Take me back to the start

2010-04-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

Guttentag and welcome to what I hope is my last blog from Berlin.

Although there is a total absence of any air traffic over the city I remain confident that my 5.35pm flight will take off as planned and carry me to Liverpool. I could be home by 10pm.

Given the options available I have made the most of my enforced stay in Berlin. I have walked for miles and jogged through the nearby Tiergarten. I wouldn't call Berlin a beautiful city, not in the way that Paris is. There is still too much cold war austerity about it. But it is a very interesting place. I even saw the hotel window where Michael Jackson dangled one of his kids over the balcony.

I have found the last 5 days to be very relaxing and my walks have given me time to reflect upon my gap year experience and what I want to do with what remains of it.

I see from the BBC News website that Ryanair are already complaining about the law that forces them to provide accomodation and three meals a day for stranded passengers like me. Strangely enough I agree with them. I don't think that law was intended for situations like this.

My ticket home cost about 60 pounds. To expect 5 days bed and board in a good hotel in return for that does seem unreasonable. That was one reason why I left the hotel near the airport after only one night. Bed, breakfast and evening meal there cost about 110 pounds a day. Here at the hostel I have upgraded from last week and I still get everything for about 30 pounds a day. Maybe the food isn't as good but all that Cadbury's Smash and Instant Whip have brought back fond childhood memories.

For my extra cash I obtained a smaller dormitory to get me away from embarrassing moments with French girls. What I actually got was a double room all to myself. The YHA never fails to impress me. That 15 pound membership has paid for itself many times over.

When I get back there are three main things I must attend to. Firstly I need to complete the final 10,000 word submission for my degree in Creative Writing. Then I need to get my house in tip top shape so I can put it on the market in May. Finally, I need to catch up on the work I have missed on the playwrights course with Hull Truck.

I don't envisage getting back to writing about my antipodean travels for about 2 weeks. Rather than leave this blog empty I am going to publish the opening of what is intended to be my book about my gap year. This is the same material that I will be submitting to the university so if you have any comments please feel free to make them as it will help me to secure the score I need.

The opening starts about 2 years before I become a gapper and should take me up to my first big trip, which was to Tuscany. Former colleagues in particular may find some of my observations about the workplace interesting!

The question I have been asked a few times recently is 'What next?', meaning what trips do I have planned. Well, as of now, none.

I did have a plan to tour Europe by train for about a month in the summer. My prolonged stay in Berlin has made me more confident about travel in Europe by rail and hostel. But it also highlights a deficiency - I am not a Bill Bryson or Paul Theroux. They are travellers who happily disappear on their own for months on end. I enjoy my own company up to a point but it can get a bit tedious and when staying in a hostel where most people are far younger there is a tendency to feel isolated.

Equally, touring New Zealand with Pete for 3 weeks led to some tensions. So, as ever it is the middle path that suits me best. That is travelling with a reasonably sized group of people that contains warm and entertaining individuals. By far the best example of that over the last year was the activity week my youngest son and I had in Turkey last August. I made friends on that holiday who I love dearly and keep in regular contact with.

Most likely then I will embark on another of the group tours. A cycling tour of the coast of Croatia is catching my eye at the moment. There is also the possibilty that I will be joining a friend on the Coast to Coast walk across England, from St Bees in the west to Robin Hood's Bay in the east. I hope to agree on that this weekend.

Please join me on Monday 26th April for a series of blogs that take me back to the start and allow me to explain a bit more about my former life and how I came to be having this gap year.

Live long and prosper.

Berlin

2010-04-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

My last trip overseas was to Australia and New Zealand and I have forgotten how much more difficult travel can be when there is a language barrier.

'Wa breah ya wan dat on, yeah?'

'Pardon?'

'Da breah. Wot one?'

Buying a Subway sandwich is a difficult process at the best of times. On average there are 27 decisions to be made as you make your way along the production line. The bread, the filling, the salad, the topping, the size. The permutations are almost limitless. You could create a different sandwich every day for 7 years and 66 days before having to repeat yourself. When the spotty youth asking the questions is doing so in a thick, Scouse accent the difficult becomes the impossible.

Through a combination of sign language and random Yes and No statements I eventually emerged with two 6 inch subs for my son and I that were not that far off from what I actually wanted.

The flight to Berlin was short, just 2 hours, and uneventful. We had flown with Easyjet, which meant the airport we landed at was miles from Berlin itself. Fortunately, the efficient German trains soon had us where we needed to be and we found our hostel.

In Germany, unlike England, the accent is very much on the 'Youth' in Youth Hostel. The average occupant appeared to be about 15 as large, noisy school parties dominated the building.

Our dormitory held 12 people, mostly around 19 to 20 years old.

Backpacking in Australia I learned that there is no point being bashful in the dorms. After all we are all men together. On the first morning I stepped out of the shower wrapped in a towel, rummaged around for clean underwear and threw off the towel with a manly flourish before slipping into my Y fronts. It was only when I got round to putting my contact lenses in to cure my blurry vision that I noticed that there was something different about this dorm. What I had taken to be some very long haired men in the next bunk were actually pretty young girls from France. It seems that dormitories are mixed in Germany. Oops!

Berlin is a city of contradictions. It is not somewhere automatically associated with liberalism, but nonetheless it has freedoms to match the likes of Amsterdam. You can possess up to 10g of weed, be naked anywhere you want and even have sex in public places. But dare to jay walk and you risk and instant 10 euro fine. Whole hours are wasted waiting for the green man to appear.

Not just any green man though. This is Apelman. He is a welcome remnant of East Berlin. The green figure has a jaunty hat and an obvious appeal to young children as he steps out gaily. The red figure has his arms spread out wide. His stance is that of a flasher, appealing to the children in a far less welcome manner.

Apelman is a cult figure. Entire shops are devoted to him where you can buy T shirts, mugs, backpacks etc adorned by the red or green figures.

You don't have to spend long on foot in Berlin to realise that you are a second class citizen. The cyclists are the ruling class. Most pavements have a section devoted to bikes. If you wander into it you can guarantee that one of the two wheeled bastards will sneak up silently from behind and scare the shit out of you.

The public buildings are dominated by the most warlike collection of statues I have ever seen. They typically depict well muscled men and women crushing snakes or riding on lions. The message is clear - We are Germans. Screw with us and you will die.

Take for example the well known figure in the chariot on top of the Brandenburg gate. Originally it was called Quadriga, a triumphal goddess of peace, bearing aloft an olive branch. In 1806, when Berlin was conquered by the French, Napoleon had the statue removed and taken to Paris. It was eventually restored to its rightful place in 1814, after Napoleon fell from power. The olive branch, however, was replaced with what we see today - a very menacing iron cross, complete with a savage eagle. The Germans also renamed the figure in the chariot - Victoria.

Look closely at the statue and her gaze appears to be focussed on the French Embassy, one of the main buildings in Pariser Platz, the square in front of the gate. Equally bizarely, the French Embassy, which was built after World War II to replace the bombed out earlier version, resembles a fortified bunker. The lower story has a facade that looks like it is made of sandbags with regular gaps for the people inside to shoot through.

All this aggressive posturing comes at a price. Nearly 70% of Berlin was destroyed in World War II. Nearly every building that survives from the war bears the scars of it. Not far from the hostel my son and I stay at is the Tiergarten - a huge park in the west of the city. Although there hundreds of trees there, none of them are more than 65 years old as the park was plowed up during the war and given over to food production. As the Soviets made their final assault on Berlin in April, 1945 the Tiergarten became a battlefield. Walking around it today it is easy to spot the many bullet holes and shrapnel damage on the various statues that inhabit the park.

Berlin is a place of history. The jewel in the crown of the Third Reich. It reminds me of the lesson I learned about the German people when I was in Munich. That no matter how painful their past maybe they have thrown their doors open to the world and do not try to hide it. More than that they are determined to overcome it.

Take for example Hitler's bunker. This huge complex lay 15 metres beneath Berlin. This is the place where Hitler died on 30th April 1945, along with Eva Braun, who he had married only hours earlier. The Soviets were only 500 metres away and Hitler accepted that he had lost the war.

Having witnessed what the Italian people had done to the body of Mussolini by cutting off his penis and hanging him upside down in public, Hitler ordered that his body be burned once he was dead.

His staff carried out his final wish and then abandoned the bunker. When the Russians arrived a few hours later they realised the significance of the smouldering body. Dental records proved it to be Hitler and he was buried in a secret location. Years later the Soviets exhumed the body, carried out further tests to confirm it was Hitler and allegedly threw his remains in a river.

The bunker itself was blown up by the Russians, although its remains still exist, buried beneath Berlin.

Today this historically important site is as bland and unremarkable as it can be. It is a car park, littered with dog excrement and overlooked by some very ugly flats from the communist era. In 2006, at the time of the World Cup, a small information board was errected. No one wants to to remember Hitler and the Germans have ensured that the neo-nazis of today have nowhere to create a shrine.

My son and I visited the site of the bunker during a very interesting Third Reich tour. Our guide, Ben, is a young historian from south west England. For over three hours he never lost my attention once as we toured the historical sites of Berlin. He even reveals the answer to the question he is asked the most - did Hitler only have one ball?

Although Austrian by birth, an error by the recruiting officer authorised Hitler's application to join the German army at the start of World War I. He became a messenger - a very dangerous role with a high level of mortality. Hitler was severely wounded and yes, he lost a testicle when he was hit by shrapnel.

Deja Vue

2010-04-20T00:46:00.000-07:00

There was an intense feeling of Deja Vue about yesterday. It was a warm, sunny day and I was staying in a hostel with a perceived need to keep my costs down. I had decisions to make about my day.

This is exactly the situation I faced a couple of months back in Adelaide. This time it is Berlin.

If you read my blog on Adelaide then you may recall that I was rather sunburnt and opted for a quiet day, mooching around the art gallery and then reading a book in the shade of the park. Cheap, but not very exciting. In hindsight I regretted that decision and felt I should have at least gone to the zoo where there were two giant pandas on loan from China. Where else would I see pandas?

The universe it seems has used an errupting volcano to put me back in exactly the same situation and allow me to change my decision.

This time I stepped out of the hostel in the morning, Roddy Doyle's The Van tucked in my rucksac, and took a pleasant stroll through the nearby Tiergarten, all the while heading west towards an attraction right at the edge of the large park. Berlin Zoo.

It cost just over 11 euros to enter, hardly breaking the bank of this stranded traveller.

The zoo is very large and well kept. And much to my joy one of the incumbents was a very dashing chap named Bau Bau - a giant panda. I spent quite a while with him while he munched his way through a bucket of carrots. I know it was a him as he had the most enormous testicles. They were sprawled on the ground in front of him as he sat upright to enjoy his snack. He seemed rather proud of them.

It was a lazy, restful day spent wandering around the zoo and picking out my favourite animals. It made me realise, if I needed reminding, how lucky I am. Most of the big animals at the zoo I have seen in the wild - lion, leopard, elephant, crocodile, rhino, giraffe, zebra and the numerous species of antelope and bush buck.

It was good to see the animals so close and marvel at their beauty. I particularly love leopards and one at the zoo obligingly stirred himself to wander around in front of me and show off his beautiful markings. The last time I saw a leopard was in Kenya. She was very elusive and we only came close to her once. Even then I was on the wrong side of the truck and didn't get a good photo of her.

Despite that elusiveness and uncertainty I would opt to see an animal in the wild every time. It is the difference between a photo and a film. In a zoo you can watch the animals for a prolonged period, burning every nuance of their appearance into your mind. But in the wild there is drama. The leopard we saw was elusive for a reason. She was hunting. Trying to find the best vantage point to attack a group of very wary impala that were nearby.

I enjoyed my relaxing day at the zoo but I'd sooner have tension and drama, even when I'm on the wrong side of the bus.

As I write this airplane engines are starting up all over Europe and I am optimistic about getting home on Thursday. My flight back to Liverpool is due to leave early on Thursday evening. If it doesn't fly then I will face a spot of bother as I go to the back of a long queue. There were people I met over the weekend who were due to fly out last Thursday and then were given new flights on Monday. Obviously those didn't go either so I assume they have new flights allocated but not until the weekend. I got the last seat on my flight.

I fear not being offered a flight until early next week. That will test my decision making as whilst I am comfortable and happy at the moment I really do want to go home and watch Hull City get relegated.

At the risk of confusing you, dear reader, my intention for my next blog is to go back the start of my visit and tell you one or two interesting things about Berlin. Did Hitler really only have one ball? Find out next time.

Live long and prosper.

Stranded!

2010-04-18T04:52:00.000-07:00

I should be at home now, sipping coffee and writing about my 4 day visit to Berlin with my eldest son. Instead I am writing this from Berlin as I am one of the millions of people affected by the closure of European airspace.

On Saturday morning I hugged my son farewell at the Hauptbahnhopft and waved him off as his train left for Hanover. When away from home a rarely bother with newspapers or even TV news, so I was blissfully unaware that a big volcano in Iceland was about to spoil my day.

It was still early but I decided to spend a few leisurely hours out at the airport before flying home. The first problem came when I discovered there was no U-Bahn service out the airport. I got as far as I could then waited for a tube train that would never come. I saw 2 other blokes on the platform who appeared to be having the same problem. Bob and Frank, were in Berlin with their wives and were making their way to the airport. Their lack of both luggage and wives did seem a bit odd.

Eventually we found a bus that would take us the remainder of the journey.

'Is your plane flying then?' said Bob in a Scouse accent.

'I hope so,' I said laughing.

'Don't you know what's happened?' Bob went on and then continued to tell me how a cloud of volcanic ash had grounded all planes over Britain for the last 3 days.

We made our way to the airport at Shonefeld expecting information and help from Easyjet. Bob, Frank and their wives were booked on the same flight as me.

On arrival at the airport every flight on the departures list was cancelled. There was an Easyjet information desk but the besieged staff had abandoned their posts days ago, leaving only a phone number to ring. There were people tapping away wildly at the computers used by the staff who book you in and weigh your luggage. It soon became apparent that these were not staff, but travellers like me, desperate for information. The lunatics had taken over the asylum.

There was nothing to do but join them. The Easyjet website very kindly invited me to log in and change my flight. Great, now we're in business. Except it wouldn't recognise my details and asked for a password I don't recall creating. Frank and Bob had the same problem.

Rumours began to circulate of vouchers being available for hotels and some people were making headway by talking to someone at Easyjet on the 2 phones left unattended at the service desk. After a long queue Frank got through to a real person and accepted new flights. He passed the phone to me and I quickly explained that I wanted the same. I got the last seat available on a flight back to Liverpool.

That flight is not until Thursday.

The man on the phone said I should book into a hotel and keep the receipt. Unwilling to return to central Berlin I made my way to the nearest chain hotel and booked in. When I arrived the cost was 79 euros for the night. I took a short walk that confirmed my suspicion that I was in the middle of nowhere and when I returned I noticed the hotel price had risen by 10 euros.

When I awoke this morning it was clear that nothing had changed overnight and I should abandon any hope of getting home soon. I don't trust Easyjet to reimburse my stay at the hotel and after all of this they may not even exist. I checked out of the hotel and made my way back to Berlin city centre.

I believe it is traditional in my situation to try to escape to Switzerland. But I won't fare any better there. I could strike out west and head for a ferry from either Belgium or Holland. Even if I do that my car is still in Liverpool.

Arriving back at the Hauptbahnhopft any ideas of escape were finally crushed. The station was a sea of tourists and huge queues for the ticket offices. It's not chaos as Germany doesn't do chaos. Dejected people were sitting around talking into mobile phones, all having conversations about escape. Stepping outside the station into the bright sunshine the TV crews were at work recording this human drama.

I am one of the lucky ones. The world will not end if this particular gapper is a few days late getting home. So I made my way back the youth hostel and booked myself back in. I put my washing in the machine and settled down for a few more days in Berlin.

I may get home on Thursday or I may not. I miss my son. Apart from anything else I have relied on his grasp of German to get by. But I do know how to order beer in German and if you're going to be stranded somewhere then it might as well be a place where the beer is some of the best in the world.

Prost!

Dogging Part 2

2010-04-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

The big fish - well, I think it was this one, I caught so many!

The next morning I am out of bed before 6 am with the familiar excitement gnawing at my stomach. After a hasty breakfast I grab my fishing gear and venture out once more. It is a bright, sunny Tuesday morning and there are only three of us fishing the early tide.

For three hours I fish up and then down high tide. Nothing. I can’t even complain about the one that got away as my fishing rod hardly moves during this time.

I am disappointed, particularly when I discover the other fishermen have caught 6 dogfish between them. Was I just unlucky? No, that is not the answer. For during those three hours and from talking to the other fishermen I learn an awful lot about fishing. I learn that fresh bait is very important and that it must be presented to the fish properly. That different strategies are needed to catch different fish. Sea Bass for example will feed close to shore, looking for food among the pebbles higher up the beach as the tide disturbs them. I notice that most of the seasoned fisherman fish with two and sometimes three rods. I had assumed that this was merely a way of improving the chances of catching a fish. It turns out that the rods are cast to different lengths and often with different baits to attract a variety of fish.

I mull over what I have learned on the walk back to the cottage and know what I must do.

Before the morning is over I am in the nearby harbour village of Watchet talking to Dave, owner of the Westcoast Angling Centre. When I explain to Dave that I am fishing with the rod and reel my parents bought me when I was 18 years old he replies:

‘Well, rods and reels have changed a lot in ten years.’

I study his face closely to see if he is taking the piss, but I cannot detect any sign that he is.

‘Actually, it’s over thirty years,’ I correct him.

‘Blimey. That’s longer than I’ve been fishing,’ concedes Dave. He is impressed that I should have caught two dogfish on my antique gear.

It is clear that if I wish to take my fishing seriously and have any kudos among fellow anglers then I will need to take out my wallet.

After a brief discussion about budget I eventually settle on one of Dave’s special offers – a combination of rod and reel for fifty quid.

The rod is a very nice, two piece beachcaster and that afternoon, while the tide is out, I take it onto the beach for some casting practice. My first cast is a personal best and I am soon casting a good 30 yards longer than I was managing on my old rod.

As the evening high tide approaches I set up once more on the sea wall. Unfortunately the weather has taken a turn for the worse and even when it is not raining massive waves leap over the wall and drench me anyway.

My second cast with my new rod finds a nice little codling, about a foot long and maybe a pound in weight. He is joined by a second codling later in the evening.

Over the remaining few days of my holiday I fish as often as I can. On my last full day in Blue Anchor I have plenty of mackerel fillet left for use as bait so I take both my rods down to the sea wall and set up. The gods of fishing have smiled on me. There is a particular point along the wall that I have wanted to fish from all week. It is at the point where a storm drain empties into the Bristol Channel. I had observed that people fishing here tended to catch more fish. Although there are already a number of anglers casting their lines along the wall by the time I arrive to fish the 10 am tide, for some reason none of them have taken this prime spot.

With both rids baited I wait eagerly for the action to start. It is a good 30 minutes before I get my first bite and reel in a nice sized dogfish. It all goes quiet again until suddenly, in the hour after high tide I am caught in a frenzy of fishing activity as first one and then the other rod catches a fish. At one point I am struggling to get a decent sized dogfish off the hook on one rod when the other rod starts to bend crazily. I just manage to unhook the doggie, chuck it back in the sea and grab the second rod, striking fiercely.

As I begin to reel in I can tell there is something sizeable on the other end of the line and sure enough a very big dogfish soon breaks the surface. He is so big in fact that once out of the water I struggle to reel him up the sea wall. Fearful that the line will break I resort to pulling the fish in by hand, slowly hauling it up the wall and landing it on the footpath. Armed with a tape measure this time I measure its length from nose to tail – 25 inches. The dog fish is very rotund too and I estimate that it weighs well over 2 pounds.

That last day proved to be my most exciting and bountiful. I caught six dogfish and a small whiting, bringing my total for the week to nine dogfish, two cod and two whiting. More fish in one week than I had caught in the preceding 30 years.

The question remains as to whether I achieved my goal – to catch a big fish.

When setting objectives at work I always made them SMART, which is mnemonic for Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. I had made the mistake of not being specific about what exactly constitutes a big fish. Without a specific weight or length a ‘big fish’ is very subjective. Therefore I feel that it falls to me to decide what a big fish means to me.

There is no doubt in my mind that nearly all of the dogfish I caught were ‘big fish’. They were a good three or four times bigger than any sea fish I had reeled in before (I have caught trout in a well stocked trout lake before, but I think that is cheating). Certainly a fish over 2 feet long qualifies as big in my opinion, so objective achieved and well done me.

Had I not succeeded then I was prepared to resort to desperate measures. This would have involved putting to sea in a boat to catch fish under the tutelage of a proper fisherman. I think we all know by now how that scenario was likely to end.

Live long and prosper - and see you next week as I am away to Berlin tomorrow morning with number 1 son to sample more of that beer that the Pope drinks.

Dogging

2010-04-07T00:47:00.001-07:00

Doggie Two

Doggie One

I had stayed at the small cottage in Blue Anchor, Somerset once before. Apart from having a wonderful view across the Bristol Channel to Wales, its location allows me to visit my parent’s grave, which is about 20 minutes’ drive away and to catch up with relatives in Bridgewater.

My first visit was in April 2008 when I was accompanied by my then girlfriend, Kate, and we were blessed with wonderful weather. This allowed us to take many lovely walks and Kate even indulged me by joining me on a trip up and down the full length of the West Somerset Railway. The railway is operated by volunteers who maintain steam and diesel locomotives as well as 20 miles of track and 10 picturesque stations guaranteed to inspire nostalgia.

I don’t believe in disturbing the ghosts of girlfriends past, so booking the two bedroom cottage for the sole use of myself and my dog was a gamble. I knew that it would bring back memories of happy times with Kate and maybe even invoke the odd late night, whisky fuelled, destructive act of self-examination and regret.

To avoid this I decided to leave the fine malt at home and focussed on the positive. Without Kate in tow I was free. Totally free to do whatever I bloody well wanted without having to tip-toe around Kate’s sensibilities or go on another sodding walk when all I really wanted to do was crash out with a book in the conservatory.

As this orgy of self-indulgence approached I realised exactly what it was I wanted to do more than anything else – go fishing.

At this point I think I should explain the extent of my fishing experience.

When I moved to Hull to train to be a teacher in 1976 I realised that I was moving nearer to the sea and with that came the opportunity to take up sea angling. I became friends with Steve, the student in the next room and he not only had a car but a fishing rod too. Steve wasn’t the most proficient of sea fishermen but he kindly took me on trips to Bridlington where we fished from the harbour wall and caught small whiting and the odd crab.

My parents bought me a rod and reel for Christmas and I even joined the college Sea Angling Society. My one and only trip with them involved 6 hours in a boat off Flamborough Head, where I spent 10 minutes fishing and 5 hours and 50 minutes puking up and sleeping.

In the intervening 30 odd years I have ventured out maybe half a dozen times to various locations with that same rod and reel and on every occasion the result has been the same. I haven’t caught a thing.

Thus it was that catching a decent sized fish made it onto my list of gap year challenges. I thought I was going to achieve it in New Zealand when Pete and I met Greg at Lake Tekapo But that ended in disappointment when our planned trip to catch brown trout was cancelled due to the lake being too choppy.

Blue Anchor afforded another opportunity. When visiting with Kate I had noticed the numerous fishermen lined up along the sea wall at high tide. And a bit of internet research indicated that it was a good spot for catching a variety of fish.

On arrival at my holiday hide-away I allowed myself a day to gather intelligence. I walked Tessa past the twenty or so fishermen spaced out along the sea front and casually observed their positions and the bait they were using, which was mostly mackerel and squid. Chatting to one or two of them I learned that not many fish were being caught but more importantly, the next three days would see some of the highest tides of the year. Great for fishing.

As Monday arrived there were only a handful of hardy fishermen and I stepped out to join them armed with my vintage rod and reel and a good supply of mackerel. I proceeded to the spot I had carefully concluded to be the most propitious and set up my tackle.

I have only been fishing for 10 minutes when the tip of my 12 foot rod begins to flex up and down quite violently. With eager anticipation I strike at my hidden prey and began to reel it in. Yes, there’s definitely something on the end of my line! A dark patch of seaweed breaks the surface.

Undeterred I re-bait my 2 hooks and cast once again. Five minutes later the rod begins to bend once more.

A middle aged couple out for a walk witness me make my deadly strike and gather close in eager anticipation of seeing a leviathan pulled from the deep.

‘Don’t worry, It’ll just be more seaweed,’ I say to them, fearful of disappointing my audience.

Three pairs of eyes fix on the point where fishing line meets water as the lighter line gives way to the luminous green heavier line that is used as the shock leader. Then my trace appears and behind that there is something very light in colour that appears to be wriggling. Not seaweed, but a leviathan from the deep. As the fish breaks the surface we witness the beautiful spotted camouflage of a dogfish. Quite a big one too.

From the sea wall down to the water is about 20 feet. Gently I reel my catch up the wall, hardly daring to breathe for fear that he will wriggle free or the line will snap. Inch by inch I raise him up and then over the wall to safety.

The dogfish is about 20 inches long and sandy in colour with darker spots along his sleek back. It is in every way a thing of beauty.

‘I haven’t caught one of those before,’ I confide to the couple.

In fact I have never caught anything remotely like this before.

‘They can be a bit nasty,’ says the gentleman, sagely.

‘Yes,’ I say uncertainly, eyeing the mini shark that is now lying on the pavement and looking none too happy to have my brand new hook stuck in its cruel looking gob.

The couple wish me luck and leave me to it whilst I reach in my bag for my small camera. I manage get a couple of shots of the dogfish with a can of coke for scale, in between its bursts of angry thrashing.

Believing in simplicity I had travelled from the cottage to my preferred spot with the bare essentials to catch a fish. I hadn’t considered what I was going to do if I caught one, let alone one that can bite you.

Luckily I had my gloves with me. I grabbed the beast with a gloved hand whilst trying to wrestle the embedded hook free. Even through the glove the dogfish skin was course and rough. As my catch writhed in my hand I could sense his immense power and he wrapped his strong tail around my wrist like a snake.

The fish was hooked just inside his gapping mouth, having taken the bait whole. I realised that my fears that he might have fallen off the hook were unfounded as I it took a good 2 minutes for me to finally prise the fish free.

The dogfish and I gazed at each other respectfully before I dropped him back into the sea and with a powerful swish of his tail he was gone.

I fished the tide for a further 90 minutes, during which time my rod went crazy just once more. I reeled in another dogfish, this time a bit darker and slightly smaller than the first one.

As I made my way back to the cottage I stopped to talk to each of the other four fishermen along the wall. A part of me just had to share the news of my success with someone. It turned out that the others had caught dogfish too. One bloke had caught six.

As I talked to these men it wasn’t just the joy of success that elated me. It was the realisation that I had finally passed an initiation ceremony and been allowed to join the curious band of people who spend hours and hours by the sea, or on boats, or by rivers and lakes just for the delight of winding in a bit of nylon line and wondering what is on the end of it.

Zumerzet

2010-04-06T01:26:00.000-07:00

I am back fully refreshed after my week in Somerset. The weather could have been kinder but I was never bored and even when the rain was pouring down outside it was nice to stoke up the wood burning stove and snuggle down for a good read and the odd nap. Did I catch the big fish? Read tomorrow's blog to find out.

Apologies to anyone following my Australian and New Zealand adventures. I will pick them up again soon, it's just that I have other projects pressing on me too. I am on the PlayWrite course at Hull Truck now and that demands a fair bit of 'homework' and script reading. I am also meeting my university tutor on Wednesday and I have about a month left to complete my final submission to my degree course and ensure it is of the required standard.

Whilst I was away I received a reply from one of the literary agents I had approached. He said:

'The travel book market is so constrained these days that I fear we would find it difficult to place your work with a publisher.'

Not the response I was hoping for, which was more along the lines of:

'Wow! You are so funny and original. When can you sign?'

I'm not downcast about it, but it does pose a dilemma - should I complete my book as planned or would I be better investing my energies in other areas, such as play writing? Or, maybe I should just get a real job and have done with it.

Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of my plans too. I intend to put my house on the market in May, so there is a fair bit to do in preparation for that. Not to mention a battle I am having with the solicitor who is supposed to be handling the probate for my father's estate. A 10 page letter of complaint is poised for sending. 'Smoke that you bastard', as my friend Ian would say.

I hope you like today's picture. It is one of the aurora borealis, taken from the plane I was on a couple of weeks or so ago. The picture was taken by one of the resident experts on board and is of much better quality than the one I took. Well, they didn't have to play musical chairs to get a view from the window.

Be back soon.

Live long and prosper.

A Town Called Alice (Part Two)

2010-03-26T04:12:00.001-07:00

The most interesting place in Alice?

Thorny Devil

Angry croc

Another week draws to a close. And what a week it's been. One where I have enjoyed the varied, and at times Bohemian, lifestyle that I long dreamed of when I was part of the rat race.

It got off to a good start on Monday when my lovely friend, Tracey, took me to my first open circle meeting at the Spiritualist Church in Cleethorpes. It was immensely interesting. The spirits had a lot to say for themselves, but not to me.

On Tuesday evening I met Jim for a curry and a couple of bottles of glugable red. I met Jim when he taught a module on screenplay writing at university. Jim, who has been a writer for over 40 years, is one of those wonderful people who believes in me as a writer and gives me bags of confidence to persevere. It was brilliant to discuss the various writing projects we both have in the pipeline. Jim and I had made an agreement before I retired to co-write a screenplay based around policing. Jim has been unable to find a production company for the project, but he has wisely suggested we collaborate on a stage play instead. We pencilled it in for the autumn, when our current projects will be finished.

Last night I went out for yet more curry. This time with Steve, a former colleague who retired from the police 4 years ago and now works as a teacher's assistant. I admire Steve for avoiding the revolving door and taking on the challenge of a life beyond policing. Not only that, he's one of the loveliest blokes on the planet and always good company.

Aside from all the social activity I have cracked on with the opening to my book, Adventures of a Middle Aged Gapper. I have the first 8,000 words under my belt and I'm on schedule to deliver the first 10,000 words as the final piece for my degree in May.

There's no word yet from any of the four literary agents I approached a couple of weeks ago. I'll leave it for another week or so then approach another four. And if they don't respond I'll approach another four. Nil desperandum!

On a more positive note, I received an email yesterday from playwright, Dave Windass, at Hull Truck to say that my application for their 8 week PlayWrite course has been successful. Apart from what I will learn, this is a great opportunity to get known at Hull Truck and maybe get my foot in the door.

I am travelling to Somerset tomorrow. I will visit relatives in Bridgewater then pay my respects at the grave where both of my parents are now buried in a village churchyard. After that I have a rented a quiet cottage by the sea for a week for me and my dog. There is no internet access so there will be no blogs for a while I'm afraid.

Being by the sea, the cottage affords me the chance to achieve one of my remaining challenges - to catch a fish, weighing more than 2 pounds. Fingers crossed.

Okay, let's get back to Alice.....

Alice Springs does not live up to the beauty of its name. Apart from a small mall lined with shops selling Aboriginal art, it is a very industrial looking grid of ugly buildings. All the garish features we normally associate with developments on the edge of big cities such as fast food chains, petrol stations, huge supermarkets and used car lots have been squished into the town centre, constrained by the boundaries of the river, The Gap and the railway line. I do discover a couple of redeeming features though.

The first is the best bottle shop I have seen in Australia. Apart from a wide range of wines it also has a vast cold room, stocked high with cases of beer. Stepping out of the heat and into a cooling atmosphere, surrounded by cold lagers and pale ales is like finding a door from hell to heaven.

Taking my six-pack to the till I feel very flattered to be asked for photo identification, until I discover that you can’t buy alcohol here without ID even if you’re a hundred. It’s not just the anti-smoking laws that are tough in the outback.

The other gem came as a result of my conversations on the train with Emily, who not only dished out free books on behalf of the cosmos but also provided a very good tourist information service.

‘You must go to the Reptile Centre,’ advised Emily. ‘It’s really interesting and they let you handle some of the snakes and lizards.’

I arrived at the centre just in time for the 4.30pm demonstration. As promised, a young lady gave a very informative talk about the various snakes and lizards to be found in central Australia and passed around some of the friendlier specimens to those willing to handle them. I took a real shine to the Blue Tongued Skink, who kindly proved the accuracy of his name when tasting the air around me.

What the young herpetologist, Julie, said next certainly caught my attention:

‘Australia is home to 18 of the 20 most venomous snakes in the world.’

Having been in the country for more than a week now, I had become very blasé about the constant threat of dying horribly. I had even stopped checking toilet seats for Redback spiders and their equally deadly cousins.

‘But there is some good news,’ said our guide. ‘Take a look at these. What you have here are two fangs. One from a Gaboon Viper, from Africa, and the other from a Western Brown Snake, from Australia.’

The small box containing the snake teeth was passed around. The Gaboon Viper fang was a good inch long, while the fang of the Western Brown Snake was tiny, barely a sixteenth of an inch.

‘Most snakes will move away once they hear you coming. If you are unfortunate enough to take one by surprise it may well strike you,’ continued Julie. ‘A Gaboon Viper has the longest fangs of any snake in the world and will bite you right through thick clothing. However, all the snakes in Australia have very small fangs, so if you are wearing boots, thick socks and long trousers you will be protected.

‘Even if you are unlucky enough to be bitten the bite is unlikely to prove fatal. These snakes are quite small and they recognise that you are far too big to be prey so they will not waste venom on you. Nine times out of ten their strikes will be dry.’

Despite the odds being in my favour, I hadn’t realised just how many venomous snakes there were in the outback and a small alarm bell began to sound. In a couple of days I would be taking a 7 mile walk around the base of Uluru.

The talk over I had time to wander around and see the various Bearded Dragons and Thorny Devils in their enclosures. The prize exhibit was a freshwater crocodile, which was in a large pool that afforded underwater views through thick glass.

I have seen crocodiles in the wild in both South Africa and Kenya. As photographic subjects go they are among the most boring. Every photo I have of a wild croc depicts this log-like creature lying inert in the water.

The captive specimen is lying at the bottom of his pool. I take a few pictures of him through the glass, but they are still not very exciting. Then a middle aged Aussie chap appears and I take him to be the owner of the reptile centre.

‘Hang on, mate,’ he yells to me from above. ‘I’ll wake him up for you.’

The reptile bloke then proceeds to bash the water with a large pole, just above my view point. The effect on the croc is startling. He shoots towards me and the pole, mouth wide for the attack. I take my best croc pictures ever. I imagine that they represent the last thing many a hapless creature sees when nipping down to the billabong for a quick drink.

Back at the hostel I prepare my supper and sit outside in the comfortable heat of the early evening. The History Boys is showing on the outdoor cinema screen. I’ve seen the film twice before. It is based on the play of the same name by fellow Yorkshireman, Alan Bennett. In fact we were both born in Armley, Leeds, although that’s where our similarity ends. Strangely, I went to Leeds Grammar School, having earned a scholarship, and Alan didn’t. He attended Leeds Modern, a boys’ school to the north of the city. It doesn’t seem to have held him back. The film is one of my favourites, a reminder, if it were needed, of Bennett’s sheer genius.

I check for snakes and spiders under my seat, then settle down with my vegetable pasta and a few cold ones to watch the movie. A message from home arrives on my iPod. Apparently it’s snowing there again. Shame.

A Town Called Alice (Part One)

2010-03-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

Alice Springs YHA, complete with outdoor movie screen

Alice wet now and again

The ANZAC memorial

Next morning I arise far too early, the excitement of long distance rail travel undiminished. Spurred on by my successful interview with Emily I spot one of the train managers and decide to try my questioning skills once more whilst it is quiet.

‘G’day. Did you sleep okay?’ she asks me as I approach her. I see from her name badge that she is called Hayley. The badge is attached to a very smart khaki uniform, worn by all the staff on board the train. They all lined up on the platform at Adelaide, posing with easy smiles for photographs but at the same time ready to spring into action and beat the crap out of any scumbag trying to sneak from Red Class to Gold Class.

‘Yes, fine thank you.’

Hayley, who I take to be in her late twenties, chats amiably about weather and what’s on offer for breakfast but I want more than mere trivia. I wade in with my killer question:

‘Does anything exciting ever happen on the train?’

'God, yes, ' she relies. 'Mainly around the mining towns. We get some rough characters getting on board and they do get out of hand. Fights often break out. We chuck them off the train, them and the smokers.'

What? I'm not exactly pro-smoking, especially in a confined space like a train, but to be thrown off in the middle of a desert and left to fend for yourself sounds like a harsh punishment for lighting up. Judging by what I have seen out of the window even Crocodile Dundee would have trouble making it through the day.

Fortunately Hayley clarifies that they only get thrown off at stations and the police are waiting when they get there. Nonetheless, Hayley’s words present me with an image of the police in Australia that it very different to the one I am used to.

Much crime goes unrecorded in Britain as people often perceive the police to be too busy or disinterested to make it worth the effort of reporting something. It is a perception that is not undeserved. I know of many instances where a person has reported a crime only to receive a standard letter telling them that it will not be investigated further. To ensure the insult really hits home, the letter is often addressed wrongly and the name of the person misspelled.

Things appear to be different in Australia where it seems that even the minor offence of having a quick fag in the bog will render you worthy of the attention of a police welcoming committee. I’m not sure which response causes me the most distress.

Luckily there are no brawlers, drunks, druggies or surreptitious smokers on the train today, so when I get off it at Alice Springs there is no sign of a posse of burly cops with cuffs and dogs.

I say goodbye to the lovely Emily, pick up my backpack and stride off into the late afternoon heat, which is notably several degrees hotter than it was in Adelaide.

The youth hostel at Alice Springs used to be an outdoor movie theatre and the hostel maintains the tradition by screening a movie every evening. I am welcomed by the staff and directed to my four bed dormitory. I pass the swimming pool on the way, which in the afternoon heat is very inviting, but I have less than 24 hours in Alice so I need to take in the sights.

My room is neat, tidy and thankfully it has air conditioning. It also has a very friendly German bloke in it.

‘Hello, my name is Rudolf. I am pleased to meet you.’

‘Hi,’ I say, shaking Rudolph’s hand. ‘I’m Bryan. Have you been in Australia long?’

‘Yes. I am being here two months now. I have travelled all the way along the East Coast and I am now making my way north to Darwin.’

‘Good. And are you enjoying your stay?’

‘Yes, I am enjoying the trip. I am making the very good friends in Sydney so now I have somewhere to stay. I am going back to Sydney and I will stay there for three more weeks.’

‘That’s good,’ I say. It’s nice to meet you.’

I know that I should have milked Rudolph dry for information and funny anecdotes to spread out over the next two pages and I am sure L. Peat O’Neil will be disappointed in me, but as I have said, I am keen to take in all that Alice has to offer.

I stow away my luggage, splash on the Factor 6 and grab what I need for a few hours of aimless wandering.

‘See you later, Rudolf.’

The first thing I notice as I make my way along Leichhart Terrace is that there are far more Aboriginal people here than I have seen so far in Australia. And well there should be. The Arrerente people have been living in and around his area for 50,000 years. The first white man, John McDouall Stewart, did not arrive until 1862.

The name of the town indicates a great deal of optimism by early white settlers who mistook a waterhole in the Todd River for a permanent spring. They named the town after the wife of the former postmaster general of South Australia, Sir Charles Todd and the river after Charlie boy himself.

The Todd River runs roughly north to south and forms an obvious border along the town. I fancy a game of pooh sticks so I cross the street to check it out. Instead of finding a raging torrent I discover an extremely dry, sun baked stretch of clay.

As Emily had explained to me on The Ghan:

‘They say that you have to see the Todd River in full flow three times before you’re considered to be a local in Alice. I know people who have lived there for 5 years and not seen it flow three times.’

As I said, naming the place after a spring was a tad optimistic. Then again ‘Alice wet now and again’ doesn’t quite have the same ring and Mrs Todd might have felt a bit insulted.

To the south of Alice there is an even more formidable barrier – The MacDonnell Ranges, a 400 mile long mountain range running east-west through central Australia. The Aborigines call the ranges Aranda. John McDouall Stewart may have been a great explorer, but he was clearly a bit of a bum kisser too and chose to rename them after the Governor of South Australia at the time. There seems to be a lot of that in former British colonies.

If the town is unfortunate to be named after a non-existent water feature it is at least blessed by being right next to the one and only gap in the MacDonnell Ranges, known locally in a triumph of modern Australian simplicity as: ‘The Gap.’

The Ghan Part 2

2010-03-19T03:30:00.000-07:00

Tony Hawks bids farewell to Ireland and I look up expectantly for my free book to drop out of the heavens. Nothing. Feeling a little bit miffed at the Cosmic Ordering Service I resort to leafing through the only other book that I brought from England. It is called Travel Writing by L Peat O’Neil. I bought it whilst I was still at work, when the idea of writing about my gap year was developing. The book has a 5 star rating on Amazon, albeit that only one person has reviewed it. ‘A very useful addition to any budding travel writer’s library,’ said ‘A Customer’ (aka L Peat O’Neil’s literary agent). Still, it was enough endorsement for me. I would study L Peat O’Neil’s advice during my last month or so at work and hit the ground running as the budding travel writer.

Except I didn’t. Here I was, half way through my gap year and opening the book for the first time. I scanned it for tips on what I should have been doing on my travels.

‘A travel writer must talk to strangers,’ advises Ms O’Neil. I look about and realise I’m surrounded by strangers. There’s a middle aged couple a few rows back who don’t look very happy with each other. I reckon that if I can get them talking to me all kinds of revelations could be made. A sort of Jeremy Kyle show on rails. Sadly, I don’t have the courage to approach them and opt for a maxim of my own – keep it simple. I turn to the girl next door –

‘Emily, what’s the most exciting thing that has happened to you on your travels?’

‘Gosh. That’s a tough question. Exciting? Well, as I have said I’m on my way home from Malaysia. On the way there the plane to Adelaide was delayed by 4 hours. It was late when I got to the airport and as my flight was very early the next morning I thought I’d sleep at the airport. I’d got settled when the security guard approached and said the airport closed at 11pm and I had to leave.’

‘Right,’ I say, not quite sure where this was going.

‘There was another woman there, so I told her what was happening. There was one last shuttle bus into Adelaide if we were quick,’ continued Emily. ‘She said she was on the same plane as me but she didn’t have any money. I told her it was on me and we got ourselves into Adelaide, found a hostel and shared a room for the night.’

‘Which you paid for?’

‘Yes. Eighty dollars. I was ripped off but didn’t have a choice. Then things got worse.’

‘What happened?’ I was getting engrossed in Emily’s story.

‘The woman set the alarm on her phone, but it didn’t go off. We woke up with just 25 minutes to spare until my plane took off.’

Good grief! Dan Brown would be pleased with the tension Emily is building up.

‘We got dressed quickly, found a taxi and told him to step on it. “No worries,” he said and then proceeded to keep well under the speed limit.

‘We arrived at the airport just as the plane was boarding. Only, it wasn’t my plane. The woman was on that plane but I’d made a mistake. Mine didn’t leave for another 45 minutes.’

‘Oh, right,’ I say, a tad disappointed with this ending.

‘When I got to Malaysia I was supposed to meet my friend, Jenny, but she didn’t turn up to meet me.’

This is more like it. We’re off again.

‘I waited for an hour but there was no sign of her. Jenny had made all the arrangements for our stay in Malaysia. Without her I didn’t know what to do.’

‘My goodness. What happened?’

‘I went to the hostel Jenny was staying at, but she had checked out! The receptionist searched for her but Jenny had left.’

‘So, you’re stuck in Malaysia with no idea where your friend is and where you are meant to go next?’

‘Exactly. But the receptionist did find Jenny’s lap top. I knew that she would come back for it so I waited. Sure enough, about an hour later Jenny turned up at the hostel. She had got my arrival time wrong. We must have just missed each other at the airport’

‘Wow. That’s some story,’ I say appreciatively.

L Peat O’Neil certainly knows her stuff. All that from one question. I pick up Travel Writing and stare at it admiringly.

‘What’s that you’re reading?’ asks Emily.

‘It’s a book about travel writing.’

‘Oh, right. I picked up this book in Malaysia,’ says Emily, reaching into her small rucksack. ‘It’s called The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.'

I instantly recognise the book that Emily is holding. It has received good reviews and was one of those that I picked up in Bookers the day previously but put back as it was too expensive.

‘I’ve heard of that. Are you enjoying it?’ I ask Emily.

‘Yes, it’s an easy read. I’ve just finished it. Here, you can have it if you want.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course. Here.’

Emily hands me a very battered but free copy of The Memory Keeper’s’ Daughter’ by Kim Edwards.

‘Thank you, that’s very kind,’ I say, addressing both Emily and the cosmos.

Look!

2010-03-17T04:15:00.000-07:00

Err, it's quite dark. Click on it for a better view.

Sorry to interrupt my Australian travels, but I just had to show you this picture that I took late last night. Isn't it brilliant?

Okay, I admit, it's not quite the image I was hoping for, but it's what it represents that is so fantastic to me. Any idea what it is?

Yes, aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights.

Seeing the northern lights features large in my list of 20 challenges to be achieved in my gap year. As challenges go it is not very physically demanding, but ticking it off required a lot of luck and some planning.

I considered taking a trip to Iceland, Norway or Finland, but even a few days in any of these places would have cost over £1,000 and that's without beer money. Even then I would not have been guaranteed a sighting.

The aurora is a very unusual phenomenon. I'm not going explain the technicalities of how it occurs as that will mean cutting and pasting from Wikipedia or some such site to bring a level of detail that will bore both of us. Let me just explain my own understanding and if anyone reading this knows better then I'm happy to be corrected.

The northern (and southern) lights are directly related to solar activity i.e. sun spots and solar flares. These give off what is known as the solar wind, a flow of ions away from the sun. This wind would be lethal to us were it not for earth's magnetic field that protects us, much in the same way that the Starship Enterprise's forward shields protect it from Klingon photon torpedoes. Although the solar wind is deflected around the earth, some ions do reach us as they are dragged into our atmosphere in the backwash as they reach the far side of the earth, much in the same way that a fast moving vehicle will produce a slip stream behind it that sucks in other objects, such as cyclists. These ions react with our magnetic field to create a geomagnetic storm which is visible as a ring of light around the earth near its poles. For reasons not fully understood, the aurora are most prominent around the time of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

All that is my way of saying that this time of year affords one of the best opportunities for seeing the northern lights.

I chose to take my chances and view the lights as cheaply as possible by joining a trip aboard a chartered jet that flew north from Doncaster.

I was one of about 170 people who gathered at Robin Hood Airport last night for the trip. The evening began with talks by experts, Paul Money, a reviewer for Sky at Night magazine, and Steve Lawrence, a co-presenter on the Sky at Night TV programme. Paul told his rapt audience about what would be visible in the night sky and Steve explained the mechanics of the aurora borealis. He ended, rather dramatically with the aurora forecast. This is never precise, but takes into account a number of factors, including solar activity, to rate the possibility of seeing the northern lights on a scale of 1 to 9. Our chances were rated at 2. Not disastrous but it could have been better.

The talks over, we boarded the plane and headed north. Half an hour into the journey every light in the cabin was switched off to accustom our eyes tom the dark. The astronomers on board then explained what could be seen out of the windows, whilst the passengers played musical chairs to give everyone a chance of the window seat.

What was good was to have an expert pointing out features in the night sky - the different constellations and visible galaxies. I learned a lot that will stand me in good stead next time I get my telescope out of the garage. Three weeks ago I was stood atop a small mountain in New Zealand with a perfect view of the night sky above me. It was breathtaking and I'm afraid that the view out of a plane window can never match that experience.

As we ventured further north there was good news. The faint outline of the aurora became visible. The plane captain kindly kept going until we reached 63 degrees north, which may not sound like much but that's further north than Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki. The Arctic Circle is just over 66 degrees north of the equator.

The plane ran legs east and west to give both sides an equal chance to see the aurora in the northern sky. Musical chairs gave way to pass the parcel as it was very much a case of being next to the window at the right time when the lights were on your side. They also pulsed brighter and darker to make it even more of a lottery. I thought I was going to miss out as the two elderly ladies on my row seemed to have their timing better than mine. Luck prevailed. I was in the hot seat as the plane made a bonus run of just 2 minutes. As we turned around the glorious lights came into full view before me. Once more that feeling of elation raced through me as I realised that I had done something that was important to me.

I made a wild stab at a photo, giving my camera a 15 second blast of bulb setting at ISO 3200 (which is why the picture is so grainy). I didn't have time for another shot as I felt compelled to allow the ladies a view of the aurora, which was the brightest it had been all night.

I didn't have a back up plan. If the aurora had not been visible last night I would have simply failed a task. The satisfaction at seeing such a brilliant phenomenon is immense.

The real value of last night is the inspiration it has given me to spend more time studying the night skies and learning about the universe we live in. You don't need to do what I did to be awed. Just go outside on clear night, preferably as far away from light pollution as you can, and look up.

Orion is the most prominent constellation in the sky right now. That reddish star at the top left of Orion is Betelguese - red giant. If that was our sun it would be so big that earth would be inside it! One day Betelguese will go supernova and give is a free firework display. It may already have done so as the light from it has taken 500 years to reach our eyes. Saturn is also visible and Mars is the most prominent it will be for another 2 years.

Beyond that there are always meteors to be seen and satellites passing by. Not to mention the space station or the space shuttles which can be tracked.

Go on. Look up and enjoy the view from our very own spaceship, travelling through the universe at 67,000 mph. Hold on tight!

Live long and prosper.

Here we Ghan again

2010-03-16T04:37:00.000-07:00

Wainwright posing as usual

People at the front of The Ghan arrive at the station 5 minutes ahead of those at the rear

The warders, ready to beat the crap out of anyone from the Red section trying to sneak into Gold Class

Before picking up my voyage to the centre of Australia I'd just like to take a moment.

Firstly, my last blog was a landmark but I didn't notice when I published it. According to the counter a the side of the page that was my 100th blog. Maybe yours too, and if that's true then thank you. I reckon that my blogs are on average about 1200 words long so that's about 120,000 words so far. All I have to do is cut and paste them into the book that I'm writing and I'm done. Easy.

Well, maybe there's more to it than that.

The beginning of the book is coming along nicely and I have let my university tutor see the first 4,000 words. He has come back to me with very positive feedback. I chose Steve as my tutor as he is an accomplished and published writer himself, unlike a lot of my other tutors who, whilst obviously academically gifted, are themselves wannabe writers waiting for that big break. 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach,' as the saying goes. Steve has suggested that I find myself an agent, which meant a trip to the library to thumb through the Writers' and Artists' Year Book to discover agents that will deal in the kind of book I am writing. Also, a lady I spoke to at one of the places we stayed in New Zealand has a niece who is a literary agent in London who she suggested I contact. Another of those acts of serendipity perhaps? We'll see.

There's definitely a difference between writing a blog and writing a book. I believe that a blog should be quite short and take no more than 5 minutes of your valuable time to read. Some of my blogs recently, being written for the book and not specifically for publication on here, have tended to bang on a bit haven't they? So, from now on I'm going to break them up into bite sized chunks.

Before we go back to Adelaide I just want to say hello to Sinbad and thank her for joining us here. For some reason the comment box on here doesn't like me and hasn't published my reply to your question. The answer is: 'Civilian Investigator'. My answer to that is: 'Sod off.'

Right, where were we? Ah, yes.

The Ghan train journey from Adelaide to Darwin is much shorter than the Indian Pacific at a mere 1,851 miles (2,979 km). The entire journey takes two days, but I am only venturing half way, alighting at Alice Springs in preparation for my final hop to Uluru.

The train appears to be very similar to the Indian Pacific one that brought me to Adelaide, but for some reason the seats are not as comfortable and do not recline as far. I have the window seat once more and this time my companion for 24 hours or so is the very affable Emily, a young student from Canada who is working with youths in Alice Springs for 6 months as part of a church project.

As the train leaves the station I settle once more into the stress free world of the long distance rail journey, where all decisions are minor. I have smuggled a small box of red wine on board and Emily gratefully shares it with me as we intersperse our chats with bouts of reading and iPod listening.

This time there are no unscheduled stops for terrorists or fallen power lines. Although in the past the track has seen its fair share of drama. The present rail link only dates back to 2003. Prior to this the line ran from Adelaide to Alice Springs and provided an uncertain and very slow journey. As with the Indian Pacific, early travellers faced a series of trains to traverse various track widths.

Back in 1886 three thirsty railway workers conceived of a plan to travel along the narrow gauge track in search of beer. They hoisted a makeshift sail onto a railway trolley and set off for a hotel at William Creek. The contraption worked a treat and they must have been salivating in anticipation of a few cold ones as the wind powered locomotive gathered speed. Unfortunately it kept on gathering speed and the hapless three had neglected to build a braking system into their invention. The trolley left the track at high speed and the three bodies, still with very surprised looks on their faces, were found three days later.

As recently as 2009, nineteen year old American tourist, Chad Vance, narrowly avoided adding to the line’s death toll. He got off the train in Port Augusta and went for a short stroll. To his horror he returned to the station to see The Ghan pulling out. Luckily, the train stops momentarily just outside the station to change drivers. Spotting this, Mr Vance sprinted down the track and began pounding furiously on the windows of First Class Dining. The First Class Diners duly ignored him, tut tutting over their Brown Windsor soup at such loutish behaviour. As the train began to pull away once more Mr Vance hurled himself onto a small stairwell on one of the carriages and wedged himself on board. He remained there dressed in only a T shirt and jeans for well over two hours as the Ghan sped over the rocky landscape at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. His cries for help were eventually heard by Marty Wells, a Ghan crew member, who brought the train to an emergency stop.

"Chad is a very lucky guy - when we rescued him his skin was white and his lips were blue," Mr Wells told the Sunday Mail.

"I've never seen anything like this before and I sure hope I don't ever see it happen again."

Our journey is far less eventful and both Emily and I are careful not to get off the train in Port Augusta.

Cosmic Ordering

2010-03-14T04:50:00.000-07:00

Adelaide

I awake to my last full day in Adelaide and the realisation that I am more than half way through the Australian leg of my voyage. I also wake up to a small crisis of confidence about my pilgrimage to reach Uluru, the red heart of the country.

I chose to stay in youth hostels and backpack for two reasons. The first was the cost. Youth hostels offer incredibly good value for money and are usually situated in a central location. The second was the need to prove to myself that I could travel across a continent solo, without the support of a Tuna or a Jay Jay.

Australia proved to be more expensive than I had expected, due mainly to the falling value of the pound. I judge a country’s cost of living by the price of its beer. In Australia this tended to be between four and five pounds a pint. A lot more than I would expect to pay at home. Obviously it was cheaper to buy cans and bottles but these proved extraordinarily hard to find.

I walked into numerous convenience stores in Sydney in search of a four pack and the only remotely alcoholic items on sale were red wine cook-in sauces. Realising that a pattern was emerging I eventually asked a shop keeper:

‘Excuse me. Do you sell beer?’

‘No mate. You need a Bottle-O.’

‘A what?’

‘A Bottle-O. You know, a bottle shop. That’s the only place you can buy booze.’

I was pointed in the right direction and after a bit of searching I eventually found a shop that would allow me to buy a bottle of wine or a few cans of beer. From that point on I made a point of discovering the nearest Bottle-O wherever I went. It was surprisingly difficult.

Aside from beer supply difficulties, the whole solo traveller thing wasn’t working out very well either. Emails from my daughter told of difficulties with my father’s will, which still hadn’t gone through probate. I’d tried hard to ensure that I’d resolved everything before I came away, but my useless solicitor let me down. I’d never been apart from my children for so long and the distance and time difference made me feel inadequate in my efforts to protect them. I felt that I was letting them down.

You may recall the whale of a time I had with my eldest son in Munich as I lurched from beer hall to beer hall clutching an inflatable vagina. I met so many young people that night, many of them backpackers. I enjoyed their company and they enjoyed mine, even calling me a ‘cool dad’.

I had assumed that on the back of that success the word would be out and young backpackers throughout the world would welcome me as the fun loving, karaoke singing, young at heart father everyone should have. But somehow communication had broken down and no one recognised me. There were even times when I appeared to be completely invisible. On one occasion I walked into my dormitory, greeted an unknown male with a rousing ‘Hi there’ and was totally ignored. It was a far cry from the raucous pub crawls I had envisaged, not that I could have afforded them anyway. I never did get to discover the price of disposable sex toys in Australia.

It wasn’t a Tuna or a Jay Jay I needed. I wanted to share this trip with the fantastic people who had journeyed around Turkey and Africa with me. The disappointment of not swimming with dolphins would have been more bearable if I could have cried laughing about it with Angelina and Lynn over a few bottles of wine.

To make matters worse, I was badly sunburned.

I am one of life’s mongrels. A curious mixture of English, Irish, Indian and goodness knows what else. Although I’m Caucasian in appearance I do have the added advantage of tanning easily. No Factor 30 for me, thank you very much. Unfortunately, whilst dozing on the deck of the dolphin boat, I had not applied any factor at all. The wet suit had protected most of my body, but my face was red and sore, my eyes very swollen and I had lips that Angelina Jolie would die for. I looked like I’d been in a fight with a madman wielding a flame thrower.

Looking back, what I should have done at this point was break out my credit card and turn my back on the whole backpacker-on-a-budget thing. Adelaide zoo had recently become home to two giant pandas, on loan from China. I could have gone there, oo-ah’d at the cute black and white celebrities then eaten well and toured the bars and clubs in search of fun and someone to have a laugh with.

Instead, I opted for a very quiet, low spending day out of the sun. This meant visits to the art gallery, the museum and time in the park reading Round Ireland with a Fridge in a shady bower.

It wasn’t the most exciting day of my trip. The only notable portrait in the art gallery was one painted in 1836 of an Aborigine named Woureddy, the Chief of Van Diemen’s Land. Proof of the everlasting link between the Aborigines and Geordies.

By late afternoon I was sick of culture, even if it was free and Tony Hawks was triumphantly marching into Dublin, fridge in tow, at the end of his trek. The lucky sod even got to shag a beauty from New Zealand in a dog kennel along the way. Apart from good looks, money and a wicked sense of humour, what’s he got that I haven’t? With another 24 hour train journey looming I needed another book to read.

The central shopping area of Adelaide could be any English city, apart from the weather, of course. I locate Bookers and step inside for an orgy of book browsing. The shop is the same as the English version but the prices definitely aren’t. Over twenty quid for the new Dan Brown! Even a modest paperback costs a tenner and most are around fifteen pounds.

I walk away in disgust and decide to invoke my last resort. A rare piece of magic.

A few years ago the idea of the Cosmic Ordering Service (COS) came to the fore of the public conscience and like many others I bought Barbel Mohr’s bestselling book. The book itself is evidence of the power of the COS. I imagine that at some point Barbel must have placed an order that said: ‘Dear Cosmic Ordering Service please let me make a very thin book out of stating the bleeding obvious and make a shit load of money.’

If nothing else, the book encourages a positive outlook on life and a forgiving state of mind, so I applaud it for that. On the basis that you should be careful what you wish for I have rarely bothered the cosmos with requests. When I have it has usually been to find my next girlfriend and it always has. Well, I’ve only asked it twice, but twice it has delivered. Unfortunately they found out about each other and it all got very nasty. I reckon Tony Hawks uses it too. But being a better writer than me, he goes into exquisite details that seemingly involve dog kennels and New Zealander’s.

If it works for finding female companions then surely a book will be a piece of piss? I decide to try.

‘Dear Cosmic Ordering Service please send me a free book to read on the train to Alice Springs tomorrow. Love and kisses, Bryan.’

Swimming with Dolphins

2010-03-11T03:24:00.000-08:00

Mais Je ne vois pas des dauphins sanglante!

Glenelg beach - a seaweed free zone

Majestic stingray

Next day I slip out of my bunk at well before 6.00 am with a knot of excitement in my stomach. I dress in the corridor outside the room to avoid disturbing my three roommates.

I’d done a reconnaissance mission the evening before so I know where to go to catch the tram to Glenelg, a beach resort just south of Adelaide. I dose myself with sea sickness tablets and ginger on the 20 minute journey.

It’s a short walk to the marina where I soon locate the splendid looking catamaran that is going to carry me out to sea. The crew welcome me aboard and immediately slap an indemnity form in my hand for me to sign. It does nothing to calm my shark encounter worries. Normally I dismiss such documents as meaningless, but when a crew member solemnly witnesses my signature there is definitely an air of having signed away any future claim for my missing leg.

I am issued with a large black wet suit and told to change. There are about 20 of us taking the trip altogether and a crew member calls us together for our briefing.

‘G’day. I’m Gary and I’ll be looking after you today. The conditions are good, but we can never guarantee that you will get to swim with the dolphins. These are wild creatures. It’s up to them whether they want to play or not. Under no circumstances should you attempt to touch the dolphins as they will bite you.’

Great. Here’s me worrying about sharks and now this guy tells me that Flipper wants a piece of me too.

‘When we sight dolphins we will move towards them. I will then shout “Swimmers ready” and you should put on your masks and snorkels and make your way to the rear of the boat as quickly as you can.

‘When I give the command, get into the water and hold on to one of the ropes trailing behind the boat. You must stay inside the rope, so that the Shark Shield can protect you. We should get 5 or 6 swims today. Any questions?’

Of course there are. Everyone on that boat wants to know about the bloody Shark Shield and what their chances are of going home in one piece. But no one dares to ask.

I prop myself on the foredeck as we make our way out to sea.

We are barely out of the marina when the first shout goes up and I make my way to the back of the boat. There is a small aluminium platform at water level. Two white ropes rail behind the boat and in between them is a bright yellow cord. The sort of cord you would use to tie your luggage to a car roof rack. As highly effective shark deterrents go it doesn’t look like much.

‘Swimmers, get in the water,’ yells Gary.

I duly pull down my snorkel and mask and work my way down the rope. I can’t see anything except the pale legs of the bloke in front. People on the boat are shouting and pointing. I look to my left and no more than 25 feet away a fin appears out of the water. Shark or dolphin? Luckily it was a bottlenose. But he stays out to my left and doesn’t come to play so I never get the underwater view or a chance to be nibbled.

Then, on the rope opposite, a young girl begins to panic and shout. What's that? Is she saying ‘Help’ or ‘Shark’? I’m not quite sure but she certainly isn't happy. I am the closest person to her and luckily I trained in life saving many years ago. Hang on luv, it’s coming back to me. Ah, yes. Lesson Number One - you're no use to anyone dead so don't put yourself in danger. Good advice. I try to move as far away from her as I can, but she’s closer than I thought and makes grab for my leg. A swift kick catches her on the chin and stuns her, breaking her grip and allowing me to put a good distance between us.

My goodness that was close. Thank God for my training. What on earth was she doing? If there was a shark down there then all that thrashing about was just asking for trouble. It was a near thing, but I survived.

So does she. Gary throws her a life belt and reels her. Lesson Number Two – find something to throw to the drama queen and pull them in. It must be thirty years since I took my bonze medallion in life saving, but it’s still all there. I bet I can still make a float out of pyjama bottoms should the need arise.

After ten minutes it’s clear that the dolphins are not in partying mood and Gary calls us all in. I soon spot shark girl sat on the deck with a towel round her hunched shoulders. Fortunately, in wetsuits and masks we all look the same so she hasn’t got a clue who twatted her. This is my lucky day.

Well, it would be if I actually got to swim with a dolphin. There is one more call to get in the water, but once again Flipper and his mates just take the piss. After that I just laze around on deck, like a Spitfire pilot waiting for the shout. It never comes. I'd spent sixty quid for the pleasure of being dragged behind a boat on a piece of rope. At least the sea sickness pills worked.

Being English I accepted that this was the way of things but as I left the boat a young French girl had a different viewpoint and was berating the crew:

‘But I did not see any dolphins!’ she complained.

I left her to it.

It’s a beautiful day and very hot. It would be a shame to leave the beach so I go for a walk.

From the pier I take photos of Glenelg as it seems to be a very modern and attractive resort. I got a few shots too of a magnificent stingray that glides under the pier. Not too big, maybe 6 feet across, but I really enjoy seeing this creature flapping its wings and moving along so wild and free.

I point it out to a chap nearby. He then regales me with fishing stories and tells me how this area had been ruined.

‘Look at the beach,’ he implores. ‘All the seaweed had been removed, driving the fish away, and local houses bull-dozed to make way for modern flats, all to make it more attractive to people. Don't tell me about the green house effect,’ he says. 'What about the greed house effect?'

Suddenly I see Glenelg differently.

My new friend, who turns out to be from Romania but has lived in Australia for 40 years, has a word or two to say about sharks too.

‘I’ve seen some really big ones. Even saw a great white once. But mostly they are harmless.

‘It is these people who dress all in black that are so stupid. The sharks mistake them for seals. They’re just asking for trouble.’

‘Tut, tut. How stupid can you get?’ I agree. ‘I’ve heard that there’s a company here who dress people in black wetsuits and drag them behind a boat.’

‘Why would they do that?’ asks my friend.

‘So they can swim with dolphins.’

‘And do they?’

‘No.’

‘That’s crazy!’

I leave him shaking his head. Wandering along the beach I am pleased to find that further up the seaweed reappears.

My walk takes me past the young French girl who still looks unhappy and is shouting something to her boyfriend.

‘Mais Je ne vois pas des dauphins sanglante!’

My French isn't too good, but I think that translates as: 'But I didn’t see any bloody dolphins!'

A short nap and a bit of sunburn later I make my way back but this time I walk along the promenade. The houses that front it are splendid and no two are alike. One in particular catches my eye. All steel, concrete and glass it is full of curves and designed so the top storey is the main living area. It is the grass that amazes me most. It is an unnatural green. I walk over to it to see if it is real and it is. Every blade of uniform length and not a weed in sight. The groundsman at Wembley would be proud of this grass. It is perfect. And it is on a slope, so I've no idea how such precision was engineered. I wanted to take a picture so the next time the Green Thumb Man appears we can have a chat about what I should get for my money. But I am conscious of the security cameras and sure that somewhere unseen there is a Rottweiler with and elastic band around its nuts to provide additional motivation to see off intruders.

I withdraw. But maybe I would have been okay, because what was odd is there are no people about at all. Apart from the odd workman painting or cementing something I never see any residents of these award winning beachfront properties. It is eerily quiet.

So quite a day all in all. I'd paid to be pulled through the sea like a seal on a rope just to prove that my sea sickness pills work. And then I'd gone walkabout for nothing, seen a majestic stingray and been left wondering, not for the first time, about the nature of progress and man's need to sterilise nature in order to create communities worthy of Homes and Gardens. I think I may have caught the sun too.

Indian Pacific

2010-03-09T03:58:00.001-08:00

Wainwright is good to go

A seat with a 'roo (if you look closely)

Short stop at Broken Hill

If it wasn’t for the glass partition I could stroll about 20 feet from my railway carriage dormitory to the waiting Indian Pacific train, which is standing majestically at the next platform. Instead I lug my backpack on a 10 minute trek out of the hostel and through the nearby railway station.

The Indian Pacific train runs for 2,704 miles (4,352 Km) from Sydney, due west to Perth. As the name suggests, it links the Indian Ocean coastline of Australia with the Pacific Ocean coastline. The whole journey takes 65 hours to complete, requiring endurance travellers to spend 3 nights on board. That’s an awful lot of staring out of the window as small settlements, bush and kangaroos glide by.

The journey traces its origins back to 1917 when on 25th October the first eastbound passenger train departed Kalgoorlie for Port Augusta. The trip was the result of a brilliant engineering and surveying project to bridge the 1,240 mile gap between eastern and western rail lines. The project took 5 years to complete and made it possible for passengers to travel from Sydney to Perth by rail for the first time, although they had to change trains 5 times due to differences in the track gauge.

It was not until 1969 that the standard gauge railway line across Australia was completed. On Monday 23rd February, 1970 the first unbroken journey of the Indian Pacific commenced at Sydney Central Station and was greeted by a cheering crowd of 10,000 people in Perth three days later.

The train offers various levels of comfort with corresponding price tags. In his lively travelogue Down Under, the epic voyager and brilliant raconteur, Bill Bryson, describes his experience on the Indian Pacific. Bill, having quite a few best sellers under his belt by this time, checked into the luxury of Gold Class. A place of fine eating, soft beds and comfy chairs. Whilst exploring the train he eventually comes to locked doors that protect him from the horrors beyond.

‘What’s back there?’ Bill asks the buffet car girl.

‘Coach class,’ she replied with a shudder.

‘Is this door always locked?’

She nods gravely. ‘Always.’

Now, I’m not claiming to be a more intrepid explorer than Bill. As you may have guessed he is somewhat of a hero. But Bill never ventures beyond those doors. Just like he never completes the Appalachian Trail in A Walk in the Woods. Bill may be a wonderful travel writer but at times he seems to come up short on the perseverance scale.

Not so your Middle Aged Gapper. I chose to venture into the limited confine at the rear of the 15 carriage train in what is now called the ‘Red Service’. In the days of the Titanic it would have been called Steerage. I must admit that budget was a big factor. It would have cost me £400 to travel in Gold Service, opposed to the £75 it cost me for a Backpacker ticket. Well, I am a Yorkshireman after all.

My 75 quid buys me a very comfortable seat that tips back to form a less comfortable couchette, with slightly more room than you would have on a plane. On the plus side there is easy access to the buffet car, which may not be gourmet eating, but is reasonably priced considering I am going to be a prisoner for about 24 hours. There is also a shower and roomy toilet close at hand.

The Coach Manager welcomes me on board. A large bunch of keys, a can of mace and a side handle baton dangle ominously from her thick leather belt.

I have the window seat and I am joined by my cell mate, Steve, a very affable Scottish chap in his early thirties who has taken a couple of months out to travel. He’s made his way to Australia via Thailand and Vietnam. Like me, he has spent a few nights in Sydney before venturing west to Adelaide.

‘What about those bats in Sydney, eh? Big buggers weren’t they?’ I say.

‘What bats?’ replies Steve.

Checking that Wainwright is safe in the overhead luggage rack, I take note of the other passengers who now occupy every seat. Oh my God! I’m on the set of a disaster movie. Everyone is here – the selfish guy in the smart suit who will let us all die to save his own skin; the nervous woman who will let us all die because she can’t overcome some hidden weakness; a nun with a guitar; an old but fit guy in a vest who will sacrifice himself for the rest of us; Forrest Gump. Hang on, what’s Forrest doing here? Surely he’s on the wrong train?

Forrest turns out to be a very nice man from Argentina who is travelling with his equally charming Filipino wife. They sleep for almost the entire journey to Adelaide.

The Indian Pacific journey may be long, but it’s never fast. The Japanese Bullet Train could complete the coast to coast journey in less than 17 hours. Our locomotive settles instead for slow but steady progress at an average speed of 40 miles per hour. Slow and steady that is until the disaster strikes.

The train makes its way lazily through the outlying districts of Sydney. I am looking forward to the view as we wind our way through the Blue Mountains and into the outback beyond. But less than 3 hours into our journey the train comes to a halt in Katoomba.

A nervous voice on the intercom announces that an electrical storm has brought down a power line across the track ahead. The emergency services are on their way to deal with it.

About 80 yards away in the fading light I can see Hotel Gearin with its inviting beds and equally tempting bottle shop (off licence to us poms). But as the train is not at a platform we are confined and locked down. I look to see the older guy in the vest. The sod is asleep when he should obviously be climbing along the roof of the train to confront the terrorists that have seized control of the locomotive and put a gun to the head of the Train Manager to make him keep us calm with a plausible excuse.

It takes over 4 hours before we get underway again. By this time it is dark and all hope of seeing the Blue Mountains has gone. If I was on a British train and delayed for 4 hours I would no doubt join countless other passengers in a bout of communal disgust and anguish. There would even be those who would verbally attack the train staff and speak loudly about falling standards and refunds. But on a journey of nearly 24 hours what do a few more hours matter? If I’d wanted to get to Adelaide quickly I could have flown for the same price. The whole point of the Indian Pacific is to enjoy the experience of travelling by this world famous, iconic train. If anything, another 4 hours on board represents even better value for money.

I awake at 6.00 am the next morning and take a refreshing shower and shave. No one else is awake so I slip into the dining car to await breakfast. The sun rises to reveal a landscape of red soil, dotted with acacia trees, or the wattle, as it is known in Australia. There are no roads and no people but I do spot herds of goats and a few kangaroos as well as a couple of soaring wedge tail eagles, the symbol of the Indian Pacific.

Travelling west I do something could never do on a British train – I cross a time zone, albeit a rather odd one as my watch is turned back by 90 minutes to Central Standard Time.

For the remainder of my journey to Adelaide I settle into the cosy routine of the prison inmate – reading, eating, writing my journal, napping and gazing wistfully at a landscape that hardly varies.

There’s no exercise yard as such, but I do have the freedom to wander between my coach and the buffet coach. Seeing that the guard is distracted by Forrest, who is asking for another blanket, I make a bold dash to move further down the train but just as Bill Bryson has foretold the door is locked. I press my face to the dark glass and catch the faint chink of champagne glasses coming together before they are drowned out by raucous laughter. The inviting aroma of lobster thermidore eases through the gap in the doorway accompanied by a languorous whisper of jazz music. I make a silent promise. One day I will return and travel in Bryson class.

Stepping out of the station in Adelaide I catch the shuttle to the next hostel and a slight nervousness overcomes me as I think about what the next day will bring. A boat trip to swim with dolphins and a chance to find out if Shark Shield actually works.

Free Food

2010-03-08T04:58:00.000-08:00

One aspect of the Youth Hostel system that impressed me was the idea of free food. Most backpackers are on a budget and so it makes sense to cook your own food to save money. The trouble is you always have something left over and since you will be backpacking to the next destination there is no convenient way to carry with you perishable items or that opened bag of dried apricots.

To avoid all this unwanted food going to waste the hostels have shelves labelled ‘Free Food’ in fridges and in kitchens. Thus, I was able to make a very edible and free sandwich from a couple of eggs and a tomato that someone had left and in return I left some pasta and a tub of margarine.

8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households in the UK per annum. Wasting food costs the average family with children about £680 a year. So wouldn’t it be a good idea if we all adopted the Free Food approach?

The ideal place to leave waste food would be the entrance to any large supermarket. You could bring your unwanted, but still edible food in your shopping bag and leave it on a big shelf or in a fridge. Then help yourself to anything you wanted in return.

Of course, none of the big supermarkets would support such a scheme because it would eat into a fraction of a tiny percentage of the billions of profit they make by driving out every element of competition in the areas they operate. So, how about charity shops? Surely it’s wrong for two thirds of the world to starve while the other third chucks perfectly good food away? Oxfam would be the ideal starting point. They could even leave donation boxes for those who feel uneasy about something for nothing.

A good idea, but I’m sad to say it’s doomed to failure. For a start there’s food hygiene to consider. Would you trust half a jar of Bolognese sauce that may or may not have been in someone else’s fridge? Ninety nine percent of those willing to use such a scheme would do so responsibly. But what about the crackpot who thinks that lacing crunchy nut cornflakes with broken glass is funny?

Which reminds me of a time when I was a student training to be a teacher and one of the less popular members of our hall of residence offered me an egg mayo sandwich. Being slightly drunk and a greedy sod to boot I accepted the grub and gulped it down. It was delicious. I thanked the odd fellow and wondered if I might have misjudged him. Never again would I call him Paedo Pete to his face.

Years later, when I was more worldy wise, I reflected on this unusual act of altruism and a horrible realisation struck me. That smug, kiddie fiddling bastard wanked in the mayo.

Live long and prosper.

Sydney Part 2

2010-03-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

Sydney Harbour Bridge - see if you can spot Stephen Hawking

I have had two interesting communications today. The first was from playwright Dave Windass at The Hull Truck Theatre Company. Hull Truck run a very occasional course with limited places for wannabe playwrights. I have been trying to get on the course for over a year, but they are very infrequent and not widely advertised. The next course begins in April and I would love to get a place. The problem, however, was missing two classes due to trips away from home. Dave has suggested that as long as I am willing to do the work normally undertaken in those weeks it should not bar me from applying. I have wasted no time in sending off said application together with 2 pages of my play script , Status - coming to a theatre near you once I've finished the bloody thing.

The second communication was a phone call from my former employer, offering me a 6 month contract to undertake some work for them. The pay is not bad and the money would be nice, especially after my trip down under. The trouble is I would have to work full time and start next week. As I see it this would revoke my cherished status as a middle aged gapper and transform me into a middle aged sell out. Not only would I not have time to attend to my play and my book, there wouldn't even be a book. I can hardly write about my adventures and then come to a bit that says -

' I had intended to do a lot of other interesting stuff but somebody waved money at me so you'll just have to imagine it. The End.'

It took all of 3 seconds to consider this kind offer and reject it. The dream lives on.

Okay then, let's get back to Sydney:

The Opera House was both disappointing and breathtaking in equal measure. I don’t know how I managed it, but when I searched the Opera House website for something to see during my visit I never noticed that La Traviata was being performed in one of the two main halls. Instead I booked to see a play called Optimism in the one of the small studios tucked away under the main auditoriums. Based on Voltaire’s Candide, the play was awful. It reached its lowest point at the end of the first half when a one armed man, dripping in mud sang 'I could be happy' as a dirge. Still jet lagged, I dozed off only to be awoken by a loud gunshot. I thought at first that I had been shot. You can only imagine my disappointment to discover that I hadn't and that I had lived to return for the second half. My own optimism that things could only get better proved unfounded.

Salvation came by way of the Opera House Tour the next day. In 1956 the New South Wales Government called an international design competition to create an opera house on the site of a derelict tram shed on Bennelong Point. Reputedly rescued from a pile of discarded submissions, Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s entry was the worthy winner. The building was meant to take 3 years to construct at a cost of $7m. But there was a problem. Utzon’s design was so radical that it pushed the envelope of engineering beyond its known limits. The design was eventually deemed impossible to create until Utzon himself came up with a visionary solution whereby the sails of the building were shaped so that collectively they would make up a sphere. Completion eventually took 16 years, during which time Utzon was sacked as architect, and the costs were over $100m.

Utzon, who received international architecture's highest honour, the Pritzker Prize, in 2003, died in November 2008, having never seen his greatest masterpiece.

Inside and out, the Sydney Opera House is a thing of immense beauty. Let me share one piece of insider information about it. The building, with its 10 sails, is not white but a slightly creamy beige. The colour comes from an exterior coating of ceramic tiles, 1,360,006 of them to be exact. And here’s the scoop - they are very similar to the ones in my kitchen.

I re-visit landmark number 2 on a day of parties and celebrations – Australia Day. 26th January 1788 was the day that Captain Arthur Philips landed with 11 convict ships from Great Britain at Sydney Cove and the settlement of this vast land by white people began. It’s not a day of celebration for everyone, with many of the Aboriginal population regarding it as invasion day.

I commence my own celebration by tackling one of the challenges on my list – to climb to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The climb is a very popular tourist attraction and the entrance to the building where the climb commences has pictures of the numerous celebrities that have taken the challenge – Michael Caine and his lovely missus, Jodi Foster, Prince Harry, Stephen Hawking, the list goes on.

Walking up the bridge is like being in a chain gang. All your personal property is taken away and climbers don grey jump suits, stripping down to underwear underneath to overcome the heat and 85% humidity. An ingenious system of wires, cogs and belts means you are tethered at all times and unlikely to disturb the 8 lanes of traffic below by dropping in on them.

The 134 metre high view from the top must be one of the best in the world, with the Opera House gleaming in the sunlight and, as this was Australia Day, the harbour was teeming with all manner of water craft, weaving in and out of each other. There was even one of those big fire ships that spray water everywhere. It was a good day to be a middle aged gapper.

So what was my lasting impression of Sydney? The tower, the aquarium, circular quay, the bridge, the Chinese Garden of Friendship, the Opera House? No. The bats. They're huge. Every evening at dusk they swoop over city like leather dinner plates. Hundreds of them.

Sydney is home to the Grey Headed Flying Fox, a type of fruit bat. They hang out at the Botanic Gardens during the day. The strange thing was that no one appeared to see them but me. I’d stand there, open mouthed, looking up muttering 'Big bats' and pointing to anyone who might be interested. But no one was.

At the risk of repeating myself...

2010-03-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

Inside SOH

Sydney Opera House on Australia Day

The Utzon Hall, SOH

Firstly, thank you to fellow blogger, Rare Lesser Spotted for nominating me for the somewhat tongue in cheek Creative Writer Blogger Award. I look forward to the gala evening.

I have been enjoying the sense of being a writer this week, getting up reasonably early and working on Adventures of a Middle Aged Gapper, in between bouts of staring out of the window, random web surfing and damn fine cups of coffee. I have alternated between writing the opening to the book, which describes how I come to be having a gap year, and turning my notes on Australia into something I consider publishable.

At the risk of repeating some of what I wrote from Australia, here is what I have written about my journey to the land down under:

I opted to fly to Sydney without a lay-over. As anyone who has undertaken this journey will tell you, it is very disorientating. The flight left at 10pm and we flew through the night to Singapore for a one and half hour stop in the morning. Except it wasn’t morning, it was late afternoon and as we climbed back aboard the plane the sun was already setting. So, as we completed the journey to Australia I saw the sun rise twice in less than 24 hours. A new experience for me, but sadly not one on my list of challenges.

Arriving at the airport I break out in a sweat of nervousness that would become a drugs mule. Australia has very strict laws on the importation of virtually anything organic – vegetables, meat, dairy products, prescription drugs and even the soil on your shoes. A short film about the restrictions is shown on the plane. It ends with the ominous words:

‘Declare! You will be caught and you will be shot.’

I am carrying bags of pills for headaches, diahorrea, travel sickness, male menopause, sore joints, upset stomachs, snake bites and shark attacks. Not to mention my canisters of every shape and form of ginger that I bought to ward off sea sickness. There’s just no way I can stuff that lot up my bum.

I have flashback to when I visited New England 18 months earlier. Kate, my girlfriend of the time, made the grievous mistake of saving for later an apple she was given on the plane. The fruit and veg dog at Logan Airport went wild. Kate was thrown to the floor and forced to assume the position while her luggage was ransacked. I can picture Kate now, lying on the floor, waving her arms and legs about like an upturned beetle while the dog tried to take the Juicy Fruity gum out of her mouth. It was so funny. Tears of laughter rolled down my face. In retrospect I think my reaction that day may have been a contributory factor to our acrimonious break-up by the end of the holiday.

I decide to declare and resign myself to an hour of delay at the airport. But, despite the dire warnings, no one is bothered that I am a ginger smuggler and I am waved through. Luckily only I hear the small sigh of relief that emanates from my backpack. Wainwright! An intimate search would have been painful but bearable for me. I fear it would have proved fatal for my miniature companion.

Taking the train from the airport to the city centre a couple of friendly cops direct me towards the youth hostel that was to be my home for 3 nights. The bright, modern hostel had been a railway station itself in the past. I paid a little extra to stay in a 4 bed dorm that had been converted from an old railway carriage. It is situated on the old platform, separated by a glass platform from the real railway station. I can lie in bed and listen to the 22.27 to Cairns easing itself out of the station. If ever a bunk was designed to encourage wet dreams among rail enthusiasts, then this is surely it.

The excitement of my greatest adventure to date beat the jet lag and I was soon out of the door and wandering around Sydney. Inevitably, I was drawn to the two iconic landmarks that would be the focus of my stay in the city.

More coming soon.

Live long and prosper.

Spray it forward

2010-02-28T02:18:00.000-08:00

If there was a theme to our three week trip around New Zealand then it was serendipity - the faculty for making fortunate discoveries by accident. For example, with no planning at all Pete and I managed to drive into the Bay of Islands, the place where the treaty with the Maori people was signed in 1840, on the very day the act was being celebrated - Waitangi Day.

But the most outstanding example of serendipity was our meeting with Sharon, a former work colleague who retired from the police in January.

I knew that Sharon was retiring as the local newspaper had done a big article about her, describing her outstanding career as a detective and how much she has done to promote the rights of female police officers. Sharon was awarded the Queen's Police Medal for her dedication to policing.

The article sparked a memory of talking to Sharon last July at the retirement function of another former colleague. It was a dim memory as I had intended to pop in for a quick pint and say goodbye at about 5 O'clock and was still there at eleven.

At the party Sharon confided to me her plans to retire and that she would be visiting Australia and New Zealand as soon as she did. We made a tentative agreement to meet up in NZ. I made a profound promise of 'See you in New Zealand, Sharon' , which I forgot by the time I reached the bar.

As our trip reached its final week, Pete and I drove across New Zealand from Te Anau to Dunedin. En route we opted to stop off at the small town of Gore for a coffee. Duly refreshed we mooched up and down the main street of the town and then popped into a bakers to buy a sandwich for the journey. The baker was about to close (yes, half day closing - it still happens in NZ) but she kindly pointed us towards a cafe that would oblige. It was the same one we had visited earlier so we crossed the road and went back in.

As we pondered the sandwich options there was a familiar voice behind us.

'What are you two buggers doing here?'

Serendipity had struck once more and we turned to see the smiling face of Sharon.

After meeting Sharon's mum and her cousins we agreed to meet Sharon for a meal in Christchurch on our final evening.

Serendipity also played a hand in determining where Pete and I stayed in Christchurch. The B and B I originally booked was unable to take us due to some building work, but they arranged for us to stay with Ngarie and Garry, a kind and generous couple who have left a lasting impression on me. Unfortunately, I also left a less than welcome impression with them.

We met Sharon and her lovely cousin Jane in a gastro pub near the city centre. I smugly showed off my new Maori tattoo, which had only been done hours earlier.

Shaun had done me proud. The tattoo was much bigger than I had imagined it would be and, as promised, it tells my story. It is truly a work of art that depicts not just my family but also the rings of Te Wheke, the octopus, to denote wisdom and the eye of Kiatiaki, my guardian.

The tattoo is on my upper arm, quite close to a tattoo of two lion footprints which to me denote my freedom and my affinity with Africa. When I showed Shaun the lion prints he said:

'Man, it looks like you've had the mini-paws.' He is such a wit that Shaun.

The evening with Sharon and Jane was a very pleasant and fitting end to our NZ journey. The Black Shag, one of several beers brewed at the pub, was very much to my taste and 'One for the road' soon became 'Two for the road'.

I awoke next morning to two horrors. No, not Sharon and Jane you dirty devil. Horror number one was I had a dreadful hangover due to more Black Shags than I'm used to. Horror number two was seeing the perfect impression of my beloved tattoo on my pillow case and bed sheet. A very expensive pillow case and bed sheet as it turned out and when I confessed my sin to Ngarie her face went as white as her Oprah quality organic cotton linen had once been.

To her great credit, Ngarie was very good about the whole thing and even fixed me up with a variety of hangover cures. I wasn't so good and promptly threw them back up. As you know by now, travel for me is all about voyaging to distant lands so I can puke over them.

Anyway, after my chat to God in one of Ngarie's many loos I collapsed on the ink-stained bed. This was somewhat unfortunate as I was supposed to be driving Pete to the airport as he had a connection to Auckland to make.

Acting above and beyond the call of duty the ever-patient Ngarie whisked Pete away and left me to die in peace.

I must have retained a small amount of the hangover cure as 2 hours later I emerged from my room shamefaced but revived.

Kiatiaki, my guardian, obviously knew what she was doing when she led me to Ngarie and Garry as the former kindly prepared my breakfast for the second time and uttered words of sympathy that I clearly didn't deserve.

We parted as friends. Ngarie posed for a photo with Wainwright and I signed the door that serves as a visitors book. And then I was off, on the first leg of a journey that took over 30 hours, allowed me time to watch 5 films and brought me back to cold, wet England.

And in case you are wondering, Ngarie has written to assure me that the ink stains have come out. In return I have vowed to respond to her many kindnesses by 'paying it forward', and not, as is my custom, by spraying it forward.

So what now?

My journey down under has allowed me to tick off quite a few of the challenges I set myself. A few still remain though, including: see the Northern Lights; catch a big fish; and fire a machine gun.

I hope to have the resources to stay off the treadmill until the end of the summer, which gives me time to tackle some writing projects. The most important of these is my book, which has the working title: The Adventures of a Middle Aged Gapper or possibly: Around the World in 80 Spews.

Between now and May I must complete my creative writing degree by submitting 10,000 words from said book. I have agreed to submit the first 4,000 words to my university tutor by the end of April.

So, over the next few weeks I will be writing about my antipodean adventures for inclusion in the book whilst they are fresh in my mind and trawling through past blogs to write about my early adventures and how it all began. I will publish excerpts from my musings on Australia and NZ on here - bits that I simply did not have time to write about whilst I was away, but which are noted in my journals.

I also have approaching 3,000 photographs to download, edit and touch up. Naturally, I will publish some on here. And for those that know me I will put a few albums on Facebook in the same way I did when I returned from Africa. In the meantime I hope you like the shots of Pete and I plunging down the 21 foot waterfall near Rotorua. That's us at the front of the raft (I'm in the white helmet).

Live long and prosper.

2010-02-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome and greetings from Aortearoa, the land of the long white cloud. This is my last day and I am hoping that it is not one that will end in tears.

Much has happened since I last wrote - an encounter with albatrosses, a spot of cannyoning, a cruise along Milford Sound, where I finally got to see dolphins, star gazing at Mount St. John (which included some tuition on using my camera for astro-photgraphy - I got a shot of the Southern Cross which I am hoping will look good on the big screen) and a fishing trip that both Pete and I got excited about but which failed to happen.

I have a plan for my writing when I get home and intend to elaborate on my adventures over the coming weeks.

For now let's get back to those tears. I was saving my last day, here in sunny, beautiful Christchurch for something special - my very own Maori tattoo. A sort of personal fridge magnet to link me to this land and it's brilliant, friendly people forever.

A Maori tattoo is a bit like harry Potter's wand - you don't choose it, it chooses you. Every mark represents something personal and shows your ancestry and family. Shaun, my Maori tattoo artist is drawing my design as I type this in the internet cafe across town. My tattoo will include my three children, which is fantastic. But somewhat alarmingly it has to include a reference to their mother too, my ex-wife. Naturally I have protested that my ex left enough scars on my heart and wallet without being forever painfully inscribed on my upper arm, but Shaun insists that this is the Maori way and must be done.

I initially suggested that I could have a nice band around my arm.

'No, mate. Those are for girls. You don't want one of those,' insisted Shaun. Maybe he can't draw bands.

I'm not sure what my design will look like but there will be some spirals to represent eternity and new beginnings. Shaun also insists that the ocean is there too. I have complained that being someone who suffers greatly from sea sickness the last thing I want is waves on my arm. Again, Shaun has stood firm. I am a traveller from across the sea and this must be shown.

So, whilst most of my friends and family are tucked up in bed back home I am being marked for life down under.

My new mate Shaun reckons it will take about and hour and half for him to complete his work of art. That sounds like a lot of pain to me. I wonder if it's too late to have "I (heart) NZ" instead?

Tomorrow I do my Doctor Who trick and travel back in time, arriving in London on Friday morning. I somehow doubt I'll be wearing my shorts next week but whatever the weather I'll be wearing short sleeves to show off my tan and Shaun's handy work.

Right, just time for a beer before the pain begins.

Cheers.

Live long and prosper.

3 - 2 - 1 Jump!

2010-02-17T22:43:00.000-08:00

When it came to being taught English at Leeds Grammar School it was a case of the good, the bad and the ugly. The good came in the form of Neville Stevens who taught me so much and for who I have undying respect. The bad and the ugly came in the corpulent form of Mark Burke, for whom I have undying contempt. With any luck the fat twat is long dead and if anyone knows where he is buried I'd love to know as a dance is long overdue.

Although Burke didn't teach me much English I do recall one thing he said in his lessons - the worst part of being hanged is the waiting (what's that got to do with English language or literature?). I can confirm that it is just the same when it comes to bungee jumping.

In the hours leading up to the possible jump I was very nervous. I rehearsed the scenario in my mind over and over and always it came down to the same thing - me standing on the platform, ready to jump. I couldn't see beyond that. I couldn't imagine throwing myself into the void below.

Queenstown being Queenstown has several bungee options on offer. The one I chose was the jump from the bridge over the Kawarau River. My reasons were:

It was only 44 metres, less than 150 feet. Not too frightening.
It was into water, which is somehow more reassuring than a drop over solid ground.
The river was the same one we had surfed under - the instructor joking that there was a full refund for anyone who could grab a jumper and bungee back up to the bridge with them.
This is where it all began. This was the world's first site for bungee jumping.

We arrived at the site, about 30 minutes out of Queenstown, in the late afternoon. I had done a mental deal with myself - to watch 3 jumpers and then if I felt I could do it to book a jump.

One by one the jumpers leapt off in a variety of dives. No one died. Everyone looked happy.

I went to desk, paid $195 and hopped on the scales.

I had forgotten my swimmers and towel so I stripped down to my shorts and joined the queue on the bridge. There were 3 young American boys before me.

Standing on that bridge, looking down at the river below, all fear and anxiety left me and was replaced by a feeling of deep peace and happiness. I had done the hard part. I had made the decision to jump. There was only one way I was getting off this bridge now.

Knowing that I had overcome a personal demon to reach this point I felt quite emotional, close to tears.

When I was East Africa I saw a lot of yellow billed kite and somehow these came to embody my attitude to the land. I saw myself as the kite. In NZ we have seen many Australasian Harriers. They are big birds but very common, like kestrels in England. That is how I saw myself on that bridge - a harrier.

Slowly my turn came. I asked for a head and shoulders dunking and watched very carefully as the bungee guy bound my legs together and attached the bungee cord.

Then I was shuffling along the platform, out, over the river. I never looked down and I wilfully forced myself to let go of the support and stand there ready to leap.

'Smile for the camera', said the bungee guy. I smiled.

'Wave to the crowd,' said the bungee guy. To my left, about 40 feet away was a viewing platform. It was full of the sort of people that go to Formula One races. They wanted spectacle but sectretly they wanted blood and gore too. To be able to go home and say - ' I was there when that guy was killed on the bungee. I've never seen so much blood.'

I waved at the blood thirsty buggers.

'On one,' said bungee guy. '3 - 2 - 1...' His hand touched the small of my back very lightly and I dived into space.

I am the harrier. I am free. I am flying.

It was a perfect swan dive. Arms outstretched, fingers together like feathers, legs straight.

Down, down, down.

Then the bungee began to gently arrest my fall and I just had time top bring my arms together as the river filled my vision. I went in - arms, head and shoulders, just as requested.

I popped back out again. Then fell again, not quite to the river. And so on until I dangled inert, upside down above the river.

Two guys in boat came to get me and elation flooded out of me. I did it! I'd always said that I would never do a bungee jump, but I did.

Back at the top I wanted to go again but Pete had a jet boat trip booked and needed to be away. There was just time to grab my photos and T shirt.

As Pete sped back towards Queenstown I had a look at the superb pictures the company had taken. My favourite was one taken from above the platform (I'll publish it when I get home). It shows me with arms thrown wide and flying - well, maybe falling with style.

Live long and prosper.

Having a whale of a time in Queenstown

2010-02-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

Kia Ora from exciting Queenstown, NZ.

So where were we? Ah yes, Wellington. Well a lot has happened since then.

We caught ferry across to the south island and then picked up the train to Kaikoura for another trip highlight.

Our B and B was high on the peninsula which meant stunning views of the sea and mountains, but hard walks back from dining in the town.

We had come to Kaikoura for whale watching. Obviously, this meant another boat and a lot of trepidation for me as I envisaged another bout of sea sickness. But the weather was excellent and the sea much calmer. I wasn't sick.

Better still, we got to see a sperm whale. A huge male about 15 miles off shore. He was a long time coming. The captain knew he was down there but he stayed down for 55 minutes. Average dives for sperm whales are 40 minutes. He may have teased us but he was worth waiting for. And yes, I am right in calling the whale 'he', only males frequent these waters at this time of year.

Eventually he returned to the deep for and obliged me with the perfect picture of his fluke waving goodbye.

From Kiakoura we took the TranzAlpine across to the west of the island. Simply the most scenic train journey I have ever been on and enlivened by amusing commentary from our train manager, Charlie.

Picking up the hire car in Greymouth we headed south. The car is a Nissan Bluebird. Surely the ugliest car ever made. And so old it has a tape deck. If I'd known I'd have brought my T'pau and Duran Duran tapes.

Next stop, Franz Joseph for stunning scenary that included snow topped mountains.

The highlight here was a short trip down the road to take an all day guided tour of the Fox Glacier.

Getting to it was the toughest part. We had to climb 800 steps and climb through the rain forest (yes, this is one of the few places in the world where rainforests and glaciers co-exist). It was hot, sweaty work. Luckily, when we reached Fox the air con was working and the temperature dropped as we put on crampons and trekked over the ice.

I know awesome is an overused word and constitutes poor writing, but it is the best word I can think of to convey the wonder of over 3 hours climbing over the ice. Our guides carried axes and steps were cut for us. The ice, sometimes very blue in colour was split by cravasses and moulins - a kind of tunnel carved by water that means a watery death if you fall down one.

At one point we walked in a cravasse and the ice towered a good 30 feet above us.

By the way, did you know there are 3,153 glaciers in NZ? Most of them on South Island. Fox is the 4th largest.

I would like to have lingered longer in Franz Joseph to walk more and see the scenary but our schedule took us south on the longest drive of the tour, to Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world.

Our accomodation here is ok, but there is a lot of noise outside late at night as young backpackers, gappers and thrillseekers party the night away.

This morning we arose and joined the river surfing tour. This involved travelling through white water in wet suits and fins on boogie boards - small surf boards. and I'm proud to say that I did surf the river, but not how I imagined it.

I thought river surfing would be like sea surfing - riding a wave along the river. But no. The white water creates backwash - constant waves that want to pull you into them. In order to surf them the trick is to be facing up river and back into them. Once you catch the wave you can stay there for as long as you are able, held in a constant surf position by the mighty wave.

It sounds easy, but it isn't. I only managed it owing to the tremendous strength of fitness of Thomas, our guide who hauled me into the wave alongside him. Eventually he let me go and I thought I'd shoot away in the current. But I stayed right there and surfed the wave. It was err, awesome!

But also very tiring. Of all the activities I have undertaken since I left work this was by far the most demanding.

The other great side to this trip was the part of Lord Of The Rings was filmed on the river. If you've seen the film it's the part in film 1 where 2 giant statues guard the river as the ring bearing party travel down the river.

So, all has gone well so far, but there is a problem. My hit list of 20 things to do during my gap year includes 'swimming with dolphins' and this I have not really achieved. Ok, I swam near a dolphin in Adelaide, but I think that's cheating. If I'd dived over the side of the boat in Kaikoura then I could equally say I'd swum with a whale.

I've checked our itinerary and I can't see any more opportunities to get the tick and in any case I'm not keen on testing my luck on another boat.

I've decided that what I need is another challenge. Preferably one that is even harder to achieve than swimming with dolphins to make it worthy.

It just so happens that Queenstown is famous for a particular adrenalin filled activity, but it is one I have always said I will never do. Bungee jumping.

So that's my dilemma. I have very good reasons for not wanting to do a bungee jump, including a slightly dodgy back and no insurance. And can I actually bring myself to do it? Will push come to shove?

But another small voice says that if I leave Queenstown without jumping I will always regret it. Just do it! says the voice.

So will I or won't I?

Find out next time.

Live long and prosper.

Sandi sets the pace

2010-02-09T23:57:00.000-08:00

Bay of Islands was beautiful but the dolphin trip was even less successful than the one in Adelaide. Not only did we not swim with dolphins, we didn't even see one. This entitled me to a voucher for another cruiseand it is valid for life. So, if you fancy the chance to swim with dolphins at any time in the next 30 years or so just drop me a line and the voucher is yours.

I don't want to go again as it was very rough once we got out into open water. The young man who was very happy to sell me a Kitkat seemed a lot less happy when he was washing the same Kitkat off the side of the lovely boat. The tablets failed and became part of the Kitkat mix.

Thankfully, Rotorua more than made up for the disappointment of the dolphin trip. This was due mainly to Sandi of Sandi's B and B fame.

Sandi was on hand to welcome Pete and I from the airport shuttle and showed us to our house. A whole house to ourselves! Our New Zealand accommodation has all been good but Sandi took us to new heights.

Not only did we have everything we wanted, including separate rooms with large, comfy beds, but Sandi was determined that we should get the most out of our 2 night stay. Within minutes of arriving she had whipped up a challenging itinerary.

The next 40 hours or so were a whirlwind of activity that involved:

A gondola ride followed by numerous goes on the luge - a sort of downhill go-kart ride.

Back to Sandi's for a few minutes before being taken into town by her husband Mark and dropped off at the museum.

Evening meal at the Fat Dog.

Late night soaking and relaxation at the Polynesian spa - a series of open air, geo-thermal pools that range in temperature from a pleasant 36 degress to a very hot 42 degrees.

A good night's sleep.

Sandi's breakfast.

Taken by Sandi's daughter to the geysers and mud pools on the south side of town for a very informative guided walk and a cultural show.

Lunch

A walk into town to the collection point for white water rafting on the Kaituna. By far the most exciting part of the trip so far. Pete and I joined the young backpackers and gappers and showed them that oldies can be adrenalin junkies too. This included a 21 foot waterfall, the highest commercially raftable fall in the world. And yes, we stayed in the raft throughout. High five team!

Dropped off at Sandi's for a very quick shower then out for another maori cultural show, a huge meal, or hangi, and a night nature walk that included glow worms and brought me within touching distance of a kiwi bird.

Back to Sandi's to collapse.

I am writing this from the NZ capital, Wellington where we have had a more relaxing day in preparation for our early morning ferry to the South Island. Needless to say I won't be eating any Kitkats and I'll be praying for the tablets to work this time.

Live long and chunder.

Uluru, a rock in the park

2010-02-02T20:57:00.000-08:00

I had the most wonderful blog lined up for day, full of interesting facts and anecdotes. But internet access is very expensive in the red heart of Australia and I've only got 15 minutes left on my pre-paid card. So here are the highlights.

The flight from Alice was quick but as we approached the airport the plane suddenly started to climb again. It was too windy to land and we were going round for another go. It got bumpy and thought of a similar trip in South Africa came flooding back. I broke into a cold sweat and it's testimony to my sickness pills that I didn't hurl everywhere.

The first thing to hit me was the heat - 37 degrees.

The first thing I bought was a net - to stick over my head and save me from the flies.

I was up at 4.30 this morning and joined a very small (just 3 of us) guided tour of Uluru. We walked around the base, had breakfast on the way and it was jolly hot by the time we got back to the Land Rover.

I learned so much. For instance, did you know that Uluru is not actually red? I mean it is, but not naturally. The rock is grey but it is the iron oxide dust that coats it that gives Uluru it's distinctive colour. That's right - Uluru is rusty.

I had been warned to expect a very uplifting and spiritual experience at Uluru. So how did I feel?

Well, nothing really. It's just a rock in the middle of nowhere. I've glad we've met and Uluru and I have promised to keep in touch but I just know that holiday talk and that neither of us will bother.

I can see it's deep significance to the indiginous population though. Every facet is covered in folklore and spiritual meaning.

If you want the anecdotes you'll have to wait for the book. Times up!

Live long and

Alice Springs

2010-02-01T00:41:00.000-08:00

Another epic railway journey under my belt. On The Ghan this time , a railway that runs from north to south between Adelaide and Perth.

It wasn't as good as the Indian Pacific, but only because the seats were not as comfortable and didn't fully recline. I spent a fitful night sleeping in shifts and needing to change positions every 30 minutes or so, much as you do on a plane. Still, it's great to wake up with the early morning sun lighting up the barren wasteland of the outback.

I travelled in the Red section, which is the cheap end of the train reserved for backpackers and people on a low budget. Further down the train is the Gold section where luxury and a good night's sleep come at a hefty price.

If you've ever read the excellent 'Down Under' by Bill Bryson you may recall that he travels on the Indian Pacific but in the expensive bit. There comes a point in the train where there is a divide betwween carriages and never the twain shall meet. For Bryson something out of the wild west lies beyond that door. An area of untold mayhem. But I can assure him it's not so. It was quite peaceful, at least with my ear plugs in it was.

I did ask Hayley, one of the very helpful rail staff, if they had much excitement on the trains.

'God, yes, ' she relied. 'Mainly around the mining towns. We get some rough characters getting on board and they do get out of hand. We chuck them off the train, them and the smokers.'

What? I'm not exactly pro-smoking, especially in a confined space like a train, but to be thrown off in the middle of a desert and left to fend for yourself sounds like a harsh punishment for lighting up. Judging by what I saw out of the window even Crocodile Dundee would have trouble making it through the day.

Fortunately Hayley clarifies that they only get thrown off at stations and the police are waiting when they get there.

In a sense that is even more unbelievable. Where I live if you're a victim of crime it takes Plod all their time to send a badly typed letter with the wrong name on to tell you they're doing nothing about it. Imagine a country where a police taskforce is mobilised to deal with 'person smoking in the lavvy'.

I'm only in Australia for another 3 nights but I'm being very careful. I did some jay walking in front of a police car earlier but managed to get off with a nasty glare. Whew!

See you at Uluru.

Live long and prosper.

Walkabout

2010-01-29T01:32:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Indian Pacific train I arrived safely in Adelaide. There was delay of 4 hours after a lightening storm brought down a power line across the track. Normally I would be very annoyed at such a delay on a train journey but with the Indian Pacific the journey is the thing, not the destination.

The delay did mean that I didn't get to see the Blue Mountains though as it was dark and I was fast asleep by the time we went through them. But I was awake early the next morning and after my shower (yes, a shower on a train) I watched the sun come up over the bush and was rewarded with sightings of many kangaroos and emus.

I was up early again this morning and took the tram to Glenelg, which is on the coast, 20 minutes south. My appointment with the dolphins had arrived.

At last I got to see what shark shield did.

Whenever dolphins are sighted the swimmers on the large boat are ushered into the water and cling to one of two ropes that trail behind. And in between the ropes trails shark shield, a bit of old rope that supposedly sends out pulses that sharks can't stand. If it's that good I wonder why the crew were so keen on me signing the indemnity form?

As soon as the shout went up I duly donned my snorkel and mask and worked my way down the rope. I couldn't see anything except the pale legs of the bloke in front. People on the boat were shouting and pointing. I looked to my left and no more than 25 feet away a fin appeared out of the water. Shark or dolphin? Luckily it was a bottlenose. But he stayed out to my left and didn't come to play so I never got the underwater view.

Then, on the rope opposite, a young girl began to panic and shout. What's that? Is she saying Help! or Shark? I wasn't quite sure but she certainly wasn't happy. I was the closest person to her and luckily I was trained in life saving many years ago. I began to recall my lessons. Number one - you're no use to anyone dead so don't put yourself in danger. Good advice. I moved as far away from her as I could. Besides if she was shouting Shark then all that thrashing about was asking for trouble. It was close, but I survived.

So did she.

There was one more call to get on the water and once again no dolphins were sighted actually under the water. After that I just lazed around on deck, like a Spitfire pilot waiting for the shout. It never came. I'd spent $98 and the people who didn't get in the water were the ones who saw dolphins, not the mugs who paid extra to get in the bloody water.

Being English I accepted that this was the way of things but as I left the boat a young French girl had a different viewpoint and was berating the crew - But I did not see any dolphins!

I left her to it.

The good news is that at no point did I feel remotely ill so my anti-puking measures are working so far. I was so glad I went off for fish and chips.

It was a beautiful day and very hot. It would have been a shame to leave the beach so I went for a walk.

From the pier I took photos of Glenelg as it seemed to be a very modern and attractive resort. I got a few shots too of a magnifiscent sting ray that glided under the pier. Not too big, maybe 6 feet across, but I really enjoyed seeing this creature flapping its wings and moving along so wild and free.

I pointed it out to a chap nearby. He then regaled me with fishing stories and told me how this area had beeen ruined. All the seaweed had been removed, driving the fish away, and local houses bull-dozed to make way for modern flats, all to make it more attractive to people. 'Don't tell me about the green house effect' he said. 'What about the greed house effect?' Suddenly I saw Glenelg differently.

I wandered up the beach and was pleased to see that further up the seaweed reappeared.

My walk took me past the young French girl who still looked unhappy and was saying something to her boyfriend. My French isn't too good, but I think it was 'But I did not see any dolphins!'

A short nap and a bit of sunburn later I made my way back but this time I walked along the promenade. The houses that fronted it were splendid and no two were alike. One in particular caught my eye. All steel, concrete and glass it was full of curves and designed so the top storey was the main living area. It was the grass that amazed me most. I was an unnatural green. I walked over to it to seee if it was real and it was. Every blade of uniform length and not a weed in sight. The groundsman at Wembley would be proud of this grass. I was perfect. And it was on a slope, so I've no idea how such precision was engineered. I wanted to take a picture so the next time the Green Thumb Man appears we can have a chat about what I should get for my money. But I was conscious of the security cameras and sure that somewhere unseen there was a rottweiller with and elastic band around its nuts to provide additional motivation to see off intruders.

I withdrew. But maybe I would have been okay, because what was odd is there were no people about at all. Apart form the odd workman painting or cementing something I never saw any residents of these award winning beachfront properties. It was eerily quiet.

So quite a day all in all. I'd paid nearly a $100 for the pleasure of being dragged through the sea on a rope just to prove that my sea sickness pills work. And then I'd gone walkabout for nothing and seen a majestic sting ray and been left wondering, not for the first time, about the nature of progress and man's need to sterilise nature in order to create communities worthy of Homes and Gardens.

Live long and prosper.

Notes from a bloody big island

2010-01-26T17:07:00.000-08:00

G'day.

I've got a few minutes kicking back my heels at the youth hostel in Sydney before I venture west to Adelaide via the India Pacific Railway.

Sydney is all about water. As long as you are near the water it is a fantastic place. But come inland and it could be any major city in the world.

The two most famous waterfront attractions are the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Both of these have featured large in my adventures over the last 3 days.

The Opera House has proved both disappointing and breathtaking in equal measure. The play I saw on Monday evening, 'Optimism', was awful. It reached its lowest point at the end of the first half when a one armed man, dripping in mud sang 'I could be so happy' as a dirge. Still jet lagged, I dozed off only to be awoken by a loud gunshot. I thought at first that I had been shot. You can only imagine my disappointment to discover that I hadn't and that I had lived to return for the second half.

Salvation came by way of the Opera House tour the next day. The building was meant to take 3 years to construct at a cost of $7m. But so grand was the design that it was deemed impossible to build. Completion eventually took 16 years and the costs were over $100m.

Inside and out, the building is a thing of imense beauty. Let me share one piece of insider information about it. The building with its 10 sails is not white but a slightly creamy beige. The colour comes from an exterior coating of ceramic tiles, 1,360,006 of them to be exact. And they are very similar to the ones in my kitchen.

Yesterday, 26th January, was Australia Day and Sydney was in the mood to party all day long. I began my own celebration with an exhilerating climb to the top of the Harbour Bridge. From up there, 137 metres above the ground I had a grandstand view of the 100's of boats that streamed in and out of the harbour.

It was a hot, sunny day with 85% humidity so quite a few cold ones were needed as I flitted around The Rocks area and was spoiled by the many free concerts being performed.

Coming up next is a part of the trip I have long been looking forward to - the India Pacific Railway. The youth hostel I am in now was the old railway and I have been sleeping in a converted carriage. It is a railway enthusiasts dream as only yards away there is the modern railway station and the soothing hum of diesel locomotives drifts into the dorm.

So what will be my alsting impression of Sydney? The tower, the aquarium, the bridge, the opera house? No. The bats. They're huge. Every eveining at dusk they swoop over city like leather dinner plates. Hundreds of them. I stand there, open mouthed, looking up muttering 'Big bats' and pointing to anyone who might be interested. But no one is.

Live long and prosper.

E noho ra

2010-01-22T01:20:00.000-08:00

'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' a wise man once said. It might have been Confucius, or maybe it was Mao Tse Tung. Either way, it was clearly someone who did a lot of walking and couldn't afford a push bike.

So how many steps does it take to start a journey of over 25, 000 miles? In my case, probably quite a few.

In just a few hours I will finally load myself up like a pack horse and take that step out of the door. Then I'll turn around and make sure I've turned the oven off. Then I'll check for my passport for the 10th time. Then I'll get to the end of the drive and suddenly remember something else and come back again. Then finally I'll be off, thinking 'Sod it, as long as I've got my credit card that's all that matters.'

It is always the first few hours of the journey that make me most nervous. That small trip from home to Heathrow gives me butterflies as I contemplate all the things that might go wrong and yet are beyond even my carefully planned control. Roll on coffee in the departure lounge.

My rucksack looks fairly empty. Which either means I am getting really good at packing only essentials, or I've forgotten loads of stuff. Only time will tell.

I have had to commit one painful act of sacrilege in order to keep my load down. My Lonely Planet guide to Australia contains exactly 1100 pages. Of these I need less than 100. So, lugging a thousand page book across so many miles is neither good for the ozone or me. Therefore I have cut out only the pages I need whilst making profuse apologies to the god of books.

Right, must dash. I've got a plane to catch and a whole new world to explore.

Live long and prosper.

P x 7

2010-01-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

During my working life I learned the value of the 7 Ps - Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. As a habit it's one that I find hard to kick.

Roughly half way through my gap year, I can see a development in my approach to travelling as each journey pushes me a bit further out of my comfort zone.

My last big trip, to East Africa, was fantastic but I always had the safety net of JJ, Leo and Julius to keep me from harm and to guide me. On my next trip, to Australasia, I am pushing myself a bit further, but I am not yet the footloose and fancy free traveller, free to roam wherever the road may lead.

My addiction to the 7 Ps has led to me to hours of meticulous planning and I now have no fewer than 4 folders containing everything I need to make the next 5 weeks a success - one for travel documents, one for use in Australia, one for use in New Zealand and one with a back up of everything for me to give to Pete so that if any of the sharks, snakes or deadly spiders do get me in Australia he can carry on in New Zealand in my memory.

My packs are intended to save time and effort abroad. Want to know how to get from the Airport at Wellington to the hotel? Easy, there's a shuttle service and the number's in the pack. Need to confirm that the whale watching is going ahead? Easy, all the contact details are in the pack.

It all makes great sense but I can't help but feel that I'm cheating somehow. I'm away from home for 35 nights and I can tell you where I will be laying my weary head for all but one of those. That doesn't seem right. The missing night will be spent somewhere between Dunedin, in the far south of New Zealand, and Christchurch, my point of departure. Will finding the perfect resting place be a stress filled nightmare, or will to prove to be an uplifting experience in freedom? I'll let you know when I get back.

One or two people who kindly read this blog have asked if I will be keeping it up whilst I'm away. Well, yes and no. I'm travelling very light and certainly won't be able to take my laptop. Neither do I intend to while away precious drinking time in internet cafes. So I won't be writing lengthy updates on here. I can access the blog via may brilliant iPod, but I won't be typing away at length on that. Little tidbits will be served. Look upon them as the heures d'oeuvre.

I am, however, fully armed with notebooks and pens, a voice recorder and the most beautiful leather bound journal, given to me by someone very special, to record my every waking moment. So expect a more fulsome account of my antipodean adventure when I return at the end of February.

I probably won't be able to publish too many pictures from down under, so this is me trying to wean you off them.

Only 4 days to go until departure. I'm a mixture of eager anticipation and nerves, in case I have forgotten something. I think I'll just go and check my passport is in the correct wallet one more time.

Live long and prosper.

Taking the Elevator to Hell

2010-01-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

Working out how to carry everything I need for my forthcoming trip to Australia and New Zealand has been a bit of a headache. I did have the use of an Army kitbag which was not only roomy but was also fitted with straps so it could be carried like a backpack. Unfortunately it was not roomy enough for youngest son who crammed it full of beer and brought it back severely damaged from Leeds Festival.

This led me to buy a conventional backpack, which got me around Africa ok but soon seems to get full. The opposite of a Tardis, it looks roomy from the outside but 2 pairs of underpants, a T shirt and a towel and it's full. This poses problems for both Wainwright and me.

Although he is barely 12" tall, my travelling companion does take up a fair bit of space and causes me to discard other items to accommodate him. From his point of view all this travelling is taking its toll and he has developed some serious weaknesses, as we discovered when we went for the Weakest Link audition.

Personally, I blame Angelina and Lynn for Wainwright's condition. He' s never been the same since they engaged in a three-way clinch with him in Turkey.

But as you can see from the picture, Wainwright has found a solution. I bought a special backpack for this trip that will safely store my camera equipment and which I can keep close by at all times as hand luggage. Luckily it came equipped with a Wainwright-sized hole at its core which he has cleverly snuck into. I have also re-stocked my first aid kit with super-strong glue, just in case.

With less than 2 weeks to go until I set off, it is hard to describe just how excited I am about this next trip. It's amazing to think that a year ago I wasn't even contemplating the journey. It only came about when I decided to abandon a long held wish to follow England around South Africa during the World Cup as it looked like being very expensive and difficult to organise.

It soon made more sense to spend my budget on a trip to New Zealand and then Australia followed on the basis of 'while you're down there you might as well....'

I envisaged New Zealand in particular as a quiet kind of trip - touring round by car or camper van, seeing the sights and getting in the odd walk. But it has evolved into something far more challenging and is far more in line with the activities I undertook in Turkey and Africa than with my sedate journey around Tuscany.

Take white water rafting for example. I doubt that it will be any more challenging in New Zealand than it was on the Nile, but the trip we are booked on culminates in a 21 foot waterfall. Now, according to my calculations that is the equivalent of placing a raft on the roof of my house, sitting in it and hoping to be in one piece by the time we reach the garden. I've seen pictures of it and they are all the same - a flimsy raft in a vertical position, plunging into some very turbulent water. There are no pictures of the same raft, full of happy, smiling people, emerging triumphant from the fall!

Later in the trip we venture on to a river once more. This time it is by means of a river board - a sort of short surf board that you cling to whilst negotiating white water. Fortunately there are no 21 foot drops, but there is the Dead Cow. Here is how the website describes it:

This rapid got its name from some kayakers who found a dead cow stuck on a rock. The cow is not there anymore but the name of the rapid has stuck. Dead Cow is the best place on the river to try some squirting (flying under water)- take a ride on the “Elevator to hell.” This squirt takes you down a couple of metres into the darkness before shooting you back up to daylight, all in a matter of seconds!

I had to ring my insurers to check on that one!

I don't regard myself as an adrenalin junkie and considering that we will visit the site of the world's first and biggest bungee jump I will be staying well away from it. But I do think that travel has taken on an unexpected twist and the urge to 'do' things rather than just see things has become irresistible. When I was in Africa there wasn't a day where I wanted to stay in bed as I knew each one held some form of adventure.

That same tingle of excitement is back now as I contemplate my latest, and biggest, awfully big adventure. I can't wait to sling my backpack on my shoulders, strap Wainwright to my chest and set out on a journey that will be well over 25,000 miles by the time I've finished.

Live long and prosper.

Paying to Chunder

2010-01-04T12:33:00.000-08:00

Appa

I can't imagine how people created their own holidays before the internet came along. I have spent a large part of my weekend with the computer mouse in one hand and a piece of plastic in the other as I surfed the net following up suggestions for activities in New Zealand courtesy of my Lonely Planet guide.

At the risk of making you jealous I'll splurge out the list quickly - swimming with dolphins sea kayaking and vineyard tour whale watching white water rafting glacier walking fjord cruising river boarding puking.

Okay, maybe puking isn't an adventure sport but if you look at those activities you may notice that an awful lot of them involve being on water. And if that's not enough then I have decided to literally take the plunge and set out on a big catamaran thing in Adelaide and offer myself as shark bait. Plus, at the last count I am undertaking 9 separate voyages by air of between 40 minutes and 20 hours duration. Oh yes, and there's the ferry from North Island to South Island.

For someone with my legendary spewing ability that could amount to an awful lot of vomit.

As some of you may know I chunder for Yorkshire and almost got into the England team. My personal best followed an ill fated trip to Alton Towers where after only one ride I was wildly sick. The Guinness Book of Records said I was just one carrot short of the national record.

If you read about my paragliding trip in Turkey then you will know that my credentials extend to international spewing. Although for sustained puking over distance we have to look to South Africa.

On that occasion the kids and I had travelled to Jo'berg and then picked up a plane to cross to the east coast to a small airport near Knysna. All was well with the world until 2 things happened. The world below appeared to be engulfed in flame and strong winds meant heavy turbulence. Round and round the plane went. Up and down. I soon got through two sick bags. Eventually the flames (a forest fire) and wind were deemed to make it too dangerous to land and we diverted south to Cape Town.

There's nothing like 5 hours in an airport arrivals lounge to make you feel better I always think. And so it was that I began to feel human again and my stomach stopped churning.

It became apparent though that in order to reach our intended destination we would be travelling via a courtesy coach and what had been a short hop in the plane would be a gruelling 8 hours by road.

Luckily there was a small jet going our way and due to some law of aero-physics that I don't understand it was deemed suitable to land in conditions that would destroy its bigger cousins. Naturally I did what any man would do in such a situation - I played the poor-single-parent-me-with-these-fragile-kids card, even though by this time my youngest was a strapping 12 year old. I think I may even have squeezed out a tear for effect too.

However appalling my tactics, they had the desired effect and I blagged the last seats on the tiny jet. An hour later and we were back in the skies with whoops of 'Enjoy your coach ride suckers!'

Roughly 10 minutes after that we were back in the turbulence and my joy at escape was replaced with the horror of being plunged back into the Technicolor yawn zone. Luckily I had had the foresight to refill my stomach with sundry junk foods at Cape Town so I was soon able to fill up another 2 bags.

Much as I have enjoyed representing my county at the carrot and tomato spraying championships I feel it is time I retired. With this in mind I have been out this morning and secured large quantities of my secret weapon - Ginger. So far I have got ginger capsules, ginger gummy bears and ginger chews in the fervent belief that this might just stave off the inevitable for long enough for me to actually enjoy some of the expensive water based activities I have paid for. I'm taking boxes and boxes of sea-sickness pills too, I'm not that stupid. At least if the sharks eat me I'll be well sautéed in ginger.

I'm organising a sweepstake on the number of times I throw up. It's only a pound a ticket if anyone wants in.

Before I go to search for more homeopathic nausea remedies (there's ginger chewing gum out there somewhere but I can't find a retailer in the UK) may I refer you to the picture above. This is Appa in his new school jumper. And jolly happy and handsome he looks too. In case you don't know, Appa is a boy I met in an orphanage in Uganda. Thank you to Crystal for the photo.

Live long and proper.

The Opera's not over.....

2009-12-31T09:31:00.000-08:00

Well at last it's finished. The turkey I mean. My dog, Tessa, had the last pickings for breakfast.

I hope that Christmas was everything you wanted it to be. I certainly enjoyed it. It was great to have all three of my children around me. A rare treat.

The Airfix Spitfire I got from my sons is coming along slowly. I have only got as far as building a bit of the engine and my efforts consist of 10% of my time gluing, 10% painting and 80% trying to find the bloody parts. There are 185 of them and if they are in some logical order on their little plastic spruces then I have yet to work out what it is.

As write it is New Year's Eve and 2010 is almost upon us. I am hugely excited. Not about the new year as such, but about what it might bring. Naturally, my thoughts have turned to Australia, which is just over 3 weeks away.

I am excited about travelling to a whole new continent and about venturing further than I have before in my life. Being away for 5 weeks is also a first, although I will worry about my kids and my dog. But what is exciting me most is the thought of all the fabulous things I can do 'down under'.

When I left work my gracious friends and colleagues bought me the Lonely Planet Guide to New Zealand and also gave me a generous token to be used at Waterstones. I used part of the token to buy the similar guide to Australia.

Travel guides are odd books because unless you travel the length and breadth of a country you don't bother to read all the pages. But what you do read is invaluable. With these 2 books I have been able to plan the travel and accommodation for both countries. So well done to my kind and generous friends for such a great gift.

Well done also to the Youth Hostel Association.

Tucked up in bed last night I read about what there is to do in Sydney, the first stop on my tour. I realised then just how well situated the youth hostel I am staying at is. All the things I want to see are within walking distance and it is right next to the central station, which is great as there is a train link from the airport and that is my point of departure on the India-Pacific Railway. And it only costs about £18 a night for bed and breakfast. That's fantastic.

Based on my reading I have picked my top 3 tourist attractions in Sydney. The first is the Chinese Garden of Friendship. Described as 'an oasis of tranquillity in the otherwise hectic Darling Harbour' it is a kangaroo's jump from the hostel. Second is the Opera House. I have booked to see a play on my second evening. The play is a period piece called Optimism. It doesn't sound that great but hey, IT'S IN THE FREAKIN SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE! I'll just be so awed to be there I won't care if it's freakish clowns juggling on unicycles waiting for Godot, it'll be great.

I've saved the best for my last full day, which just happens to be the 26th January - Australia Day. The day that celebrates the arrival of the first settlers (aka convicts) in 1788. On this auspicious day I am taking the 3 hour walk up and over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And if I survive that I'll have time for a few cold ones in the harbour before I head back to the Opera House for the guided tour. I might even squeeze in the harbour cruise.

So that's Sydney sorted. Bed time reading tonight will be Adelaide. I'm still not sure what to do about that swimming with dolphins (and bloody great sharks) trip.

Best wishes for 2010.

Live long and prosper.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

2009-12-24T02:18:00.000-08:00

Youngest son and I were up before dawn today in an effort to avoid the crowds in Marks and Spencer and Tesco. Our foraging was successful and there are just a couple of things on my to do list before I pour a Crabbies ginger beer with ice and lemon and brace myself for crimbo.

Generally I am a grumpy when it comes to Christmas and would fit in nicely on one of those Grumpy Old Men shows. Why do we feel compelled to waste so much money on cards? For me that is just a pointless exercise that only serves to tell you just how high the sender rates you. The crapper the card, the less they think of you. And now it's even more complex. No longer can you just bung stamps on your cards and chuck them in the nearest post box. This year I had to queue at my local post office to have all my cards tested for width, breadth and depth to see if they were in fact a 'large letter'! For goodness sake, if cards are so bloody important why not just buy a box and stick them up somewhere, saving time and effort and cutting out the middle man. Use the same ones over and over. That's before we even start on decorations, too much food, too much booze, the search for presents. Arrgghh!

As a single parent I have always found the whole thing to be a stressful nightmare. I'm a man and men are just pants at Christmas. We're only good for putting up too many lights, carving the turkey and sorting out the booze. All of which we do badly. In my experience it is always women who make Christmas special.

In recent years crimbo for me has been about having a week or two off work at a time when my last summer holiday is a distant memory and the next one is many months away. Of course all of that has changed this year. Every day is Christmas if I want it to be.

I think the hardest part of Christmas is trying to capture the elusive spirit of Christmas past. That indefinable something that once made the event magical. And the only way I can see to do this is to become a child again.

That's why I have persuaded my two sons to buy me something totally nerdy this Christmas. Something that would have thrilled the 12 year old me. A 1:24 scale Airfix Spitfire. I hope they got the one that comes complete with the small motor to make the prop spin. I can't wait to open the box and look longingly at all those parts that will transform in my brilliant model. I'll go straight for the wings so I can get an idea of just how big the finished plane is going to be. Ooo, the excitement.

I suspect I am not the only man of my age to have asked for one of yesteryear's toys for Christmas. The wonderful series of TV programmes by James May have evoked so much nostalgia and enabled a whole generation of men to come out of the closet and get in touch with their adolescent selves. I can't wait for his final programme on train sets.

I am so looking forward to spreading out my aircraft parts all over the dining table on Boxing Day and to getting lost once more in the comforting and slightly nauseating fug of polystyrene cement. All I need to make my Christmas complete is a Hai Karate or Brut 33 gift set.

Live long and prosper and have a peaceful and fulfilling holiday.

In Training

2009-12-21T02:48:00.000-08:00

I am officially in training - for The Weakest Link.

The letter arrived a few days ago from BCC Scotland to say that my audition had been successful and I am now on the shortlist. Having been shortlisted for the show about 5 years ago I know all too well that there is no guarantee of appearing. It is down to the producers now to create what they consider to be the best mix of people for the shows. Having put my occupation as 'Middle Aged Gapper' and with Wainwright in support I am confident that I will be able to stand out from the crowd more this time.

Well, I say Wainwright is in support but it is probably the other way around. He's even started going to gigs without me. If you were watching Soccer AM on Saturday you will have seen him posing on the table in front of the presenters and guests. And he never said a word to me!

My training for the show is varied. It involves watching and taking part in as many general knowledge quizzes as possible and trying to plug the huge and obvious gaps in my knowledge. For example learning all the kings and queens of England since 1066, British Prime Ministers and a crash course on contemporary music over the past 10 years. You can ask me anything you want about Beyonce Knowles or 50 Cent.

The other part of my training is playing the game itself. I still have a 2001 video game that is a very good representation of the show. I even feel nervous playing it. I've never got into the final two yet though.

Christmas is a slow time for news and it the same for Middle Aged Gappers. With no trips recently I have had little to report. But that is all set to change. My insurers have paid up for my cancelled trip to Vietnam which provides funding for another major expedition in 2010. The favoured plan at the minute is to buy a 1 month European rail pass and visit as many places as I can sometime after the World Cup has ended in July.

Five weeks from now I should be in Sydney. All the accommodation and transport for both Australia and New Zealand is now booked and what remains are the delicious choices about what to do whilst there. High on my 'to do' list is swimming with dolphins and both Australia and New Zealand afford opportunities to do this.

I am spending 3 days in Adelaide where it is possible to take an early morning boat trip (more sickness pills required) and swim with the wild dolphins. This involves swimming in the open sea, which is not something I am really keen on generally. Even in the calm waters of the Mediterranean I keep close to shore and swim in constant fear of being bitten, stung or eaten. In Australia the problem becomes much worse as there appear to be an unlimited number of ways to die while taking a dip, including one of the most venomous creatures on the planet - the box jelly fish.

My fears are not allayed by the following piece of information on the website of the company that runs the dolphin tours:

Please note that at the end of our swimmers lines we use Shark Shields™. These are electronic shark deterrents that creates a unique protective electrical field around the swimmers.

So let's just look at what that means for a moment. Swimming with dolphins involves being trailed on a rope behind a boat in shark infested waters. But not to worry, because you're clinging for your life to a piece of electric cable that will 'deter' the playful little blighters and maybe persuade them not to take huge chunks out of you. Now I don't know about you, but the words 'Bugger that!' are what fill my mind when considering that supposedly reassuring piece of information. I love dolphins but I don't want them to be the last thing I ever see. On the bright side, getting my body back to the UK won't be too difficult. They can just put the bits that are left in a jiffy bag and post me back to the kids.

Finally, my sons and I went to see the first of the Christmas blockbusters at the cinema yesterday. The film was Avatar and it was in 3D. I was expecting to be given some of those red and green cardboard specs as I went in but instead I received what appeared to be a cheap pair of sunglasses for my 80 pence.

The result was astounding. In it's own right the film is an amazing combination of live action and CGI that breaks new ground and would be brilliant in 2D. But in 3D the colours are so vibrant and images appear to dance before your eyes. Even the adverts looked good. It was the most jaw dropping cinematic experience I have had since the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Beware though, it's about 3 hours long. Don't do what I did and drink a bucket of diet coke or you will miss some of the film. And take those glasses off before you go to the loo. Turns out I was 10 feet further away from the urinal than I thought.

Live long and prosper.

Weakest at the Knees Link

2009-12-10T02:05:00.000-08:00

Back in August I reported on a challenge I had set Wainwright - to have his picture taken with a celebrity. Yesterday Wainwright came a step nearer to achieving his goal.

Last week I received a phone call from Ross, a researcher for The Weakest Link. Ross wanted to chat about the application to go on the show that I made in the summer. He then invited Wainwright and me to audition in Hull.

The audition was yesterday morning, but Wainwright had a few problems on his journey. We took the train and Wainwright got knocked about a bit in my rucksack. When we arrived in Hull Wainwright had suffered a recurrence of his old knee injuries and he was in two pieces. Both knees are so badly damaged that I'm thinking of calling him Bullard instead.

Luckily, WH Smith in the station sold superglue and after several attempts I was able to get Wainwright fit enough to audition.

There were nine of us at the audition, all men. It took two hours and I found it be both nerve-wracking and enjoyable.

There were two ladies, both young and attractive, in charge and during the course of the audition one of them took on the mantle of Anne Robinson. After introductions there was a twenty question general knowledge quiz for which 3 minutes were allowed.

Then the fun began as we all stood up to play a round of the game itself. I did get one question wrong but managed to escape the attention of the others and nobody voted for me as the Weakest Link.

During all of this Wainwright stood silently at my feet. He became far more involved in the last part of the audition. This was a piece to camera where the Anne Robinson stand-in asked a series of vicious questions and made remarks about me, testing my response. The purpose of this exercise is to allow the producers of the show to see how potential contestants look in front of the camera. I was asked to hold Wainwright up for the camera to see him throughout this part.

I managed to laugh off most of what was said to me even though 'Anne' resorted to comments about my age, my hairline, my figure and my clothes. Surely the real Anne would not bother with such cheap tricks?

That was it. If Wainwright and I were successful then there will be a letter in the next couple of weeks from the BBC. Then it is a case of waiting to see if we can be 'jig-sawed' into the show.

Although he remained silent throughout, it was clear that Wainwright was the main attraction for the researchers and if we get on the show it will be because of him, not me.

I do hope the audition has been successful and if we are invited to the show then it will be yet another exciting event in a pretty amazing year. I do worry though that under pressure it might not only be Wainwright that goes weak at the knees and falls to pieces. I hope the BBC keep lots of superglue.

Live long and prosper.

You are what you read

2009-12-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

Help! I think I'm an addict.

I just can't stop buying books. Worse than that, I can't let go of them once I have them. I'm in the midst of a big sort out at home so I have managed to get rid of some books, if only to make room for new ones. Some of the books I've parted with I've never read. I sometimes wonder if I should have all the books I order online delivered directly to a charity shop and cut out the middle man.

The above photo depicts the books I have bought in the last 10 days. 'You are what you eat' goes the saying, but it could equally say 'You are what you read.' So what do my purchases say about me?

Let's start with Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith. This was an impulse buy. I've read the other 9 books in the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency series and I loved them all. This one came out earlier this year but somehow got under my radar. What better way to spend a cold winter evening than to lose yourself in the warmth of Africa and McCall Smith's brilliant writing?

What would make it better though is some nice winter food. And what is more inviting at this time of year than a lovely bowl of soup and fresh bread? Hence the two cook books.

The Covent Garden Food Co. Not only make fantastic soups but kindly share their recipes through a number of books. I've had this book just over a week and already made 4 soups. Last night it was Goulash soup. I might have been a bit heavy handed with the cayenne pepper, but what a tasty soup.

As the days are at their shortest there is something really comforting about spending the afternoon in the kitchen creating mouth watering aromas whilst baking batches of cakes and pastries. My mum used to do this every week but the ready made versions are so available now and inexpensive that I have never got into the habit. Until now. Low fat blueberry muffins are on my list to be made today. Mmm.

I don't suppose the Step-by-Step Guide to Bait and Rigs is everyone's idea of bedtime reading but I thoroughly enjoyed browsing through this well illustrated and informative book whilst tucked up in bed a few nights ago. There's more to fishing than just sticking a worm on a hook. With this book as my guide it is only a matter of time before I land that whopper. I do seem to be having some trouble though forcing myself away from my cosy kitchen to stand for hours overlooking the North Sea or the River Humber whilst freezing off important bits of me. I think a flask of hot soup and a box of muffins might be need to be packed alongside the lugworm and squid.

The final book, The Man on Seat 61, by Mark Smith, is a hint of how I may end my gap year this summer. It is a guide to travelling around Europe by train.

One item on my list of objectives for my gap year is to visit 10 countries I haven't been to before. Having cancelled my trip to Hong Kong and Vietnam I find myself 2 countries short of my target. It is possible to buy a month's rail pass for Europe and having looked at the countries where it is valid I counted 19 that I have never been to. Tempting.

This is another book to be dipped into and not read cover to cover. It explains about obtaining tickets and timetables but most usefully it provides a guide to train travel in 35 countries and even beyond on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is laden with web addresses to help the would be traveller. I think I'll need a month just to plan my journey.

Talking of planning. My friend Pete and I have finally managed to create an itinerary for getting around New Zealand. In the end we have steered clear of the most obvious choices of hiring a camper van or hiring a car. We envisaged that in order to see all the things we want to see we would spend most of our time driving with these options. We have cunningly opted for a combination of planes, trains and automobiles instead.

Finally, Wainwright and I have received a very exciting invitation which may enable us to tick off a major objective on my list. I'll tell you all about it next time.

Live long and prosper.

Dear me

2009-11-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

For the last 2 days I have been engaged in on of those tasks that I truly hope is a once in a lifetime experience - sorting through my dad's home and deciding what to keep and what can go.

Having never done anything like this before I am unsure of the protocols. Dad was only buried last week. Is there a decent interval of time to be observed before I begin to file his life away into boxes and consign his many shirts to the charity shops? Or is it best just to get on with it?

Of course, there is no answer. Each person can only do what is right for them. But it's not just about time, it's also about state of mind. What might appear to be a pile of junk must have meant something to someone once and be there for a reason.

I'm glad to say that my dad was a very ordinary man and no shocking secrets have emerged as I have gone through his possessions. Although it is disturbing to find the Christmas gift of a couple of years ago still in its wrapper.

Going through the worldly goods of someone who has been around for your entire existence means not only finding bits of their life but bits of your own too.

One piece of memorabilia (junk) I am not sure what to do with is a huge picture of me when I was 20 and on holiday in Crete. I recall that my mum had taken my holiday snaps to be developed and wanted some copies made. She went back the next week and was handed a large cardboard tube.

'I ordered post card sized prints,' said Mum. ' What's this?'

'Post card?' said the assistant. 'Oh, we thought you said poster.'

Reasoning that the huge prints were no good to the shop, mum paid the post card price and carried me home.

Thus it was that a very slim, fit, tanned and almost life sized looking version of me came to adorn my parents home for many years to come. Luckily, my dad had the good sense to consign the picture to the spare room. I know it's vanity, but I just couldn't bear to take me to the tip.

Another curiosity was I letter I found. It was written by me to my parents during my first week away from home as a student. 18 year old me was a very serious chap who gives reassuring information about sticking to halves when going out to pubs with the older students. It also conveys interesting details about needing to buy another track suit as the college are very particular about the colours worn by PE students. There didn't appear to be much work done during that first week.

The letter made me think of a book that came out recently called: 'Dear Me: A letter to my 16 year old self', which is a compendium of letters from famous folk to their young selves. A brilliant idea and probably something we should all do.

If I could give just three pieces of advice to the 18 year who wrote that letter back in September 1976 they would be:

Don't worry so much. 98% of the things you worry about in the years to come are never going to happen. And of the rest you will sort out half of them and the others just couldn't be avoided anyway.

If you realise you have you have made a big mistake then pride is never a good reason for not changing your mind and putting it right. Today's dented pride is tomorrow's battle scar, but regret is a wound that never heals.

Don't waste your time fighting those curls. Enjoy them while you can, they won't be there forever.

Live long and prosper.

Fish and Lights

2009-11-20T03:49:00.000-08:00

Plane view of the Aurora Borealis

When my mother died over 13 years ago she was laid to rest in a beautiful churchyard in the village where she was born and brought up. The village is called Stogursey and is situated in Somerset, about 10 miles from Bridgewater.

My father paid for a double plot, so when he died recently I knew that my final service to him would be to ensure that he was taken to Somerset to be buried with my mum. Thanks to the efforts of the same undertakers who dealt with my mum's funeral my dad was finally laid to rest this week. The undertakers concerned are a family business run by father, Geoff, and daughter, Sarah, and I am eternally grateful to them for their care and support at this difficult time.

Thank you also to the friends who read this blog and have kindly taken the time to send messages of condolence. They were much appreciated.

As mentioned in my last blog, I had planned to be touring Vietnam right now and not being there presents a few difficulties with achieving the list of targets for my gap year.

One item on the list is not Vietnam related and is difficult to achieve. That is 'See the Northern Lights'. Given the gap in my itinerary I have been looking into trips to Norway or Iceland to tick this one off the list. But even for a few days the trips are expensive, generally around £1400 for 4 days. That is more than I paid for the 2 week overland trip through Vietnam.

There is a way to visit Lapland by way of a day trip for around £400 though. But this involves joining one of the 'See Santa' trips that are obviously aimed at young children. I just can't bring myself to sit on Santa's knee and tell him that all I want for Christmas is to see the Northern Lights. And if I turn up on the Winter Wonderland tour with Wainwright tucked under my arm then I am almost certain to be arrested under the Mental Health Act or even as a potential kiddie fiddler. Not good.

So I have taken a gamble and gone for the cheapest option available. On March 16th I will travel to Doncaster airport to receive a short lecture on astronomy and the Northern Lights from a couple of experts. We will then fly due north towards the Arctic Circle and look out of the window in eager anticipation of seeing said lights.

The picture above is one taken from one of the flights. As you can see, it is not as good as lying in the snow and watching the lights overhead. The picture was taken with a 10 second exposure, so I will have to brush up on using my Canon 50D if I want to get any similar shots. Not easy I imagine from the seat of a plane.

The trips reckon on an 80% success rate at seeing the lights so it could yet be a failed task.

Another task on my list is 'Catch a big fish'. I am a big fan of Robson Green's Extreme Fishing, so that was the inspiration for this goal. I had hoped that I might achieve this in my final week in Vietnam when I had booked myself a quiet hut on a beach on an island called Phu Quoc.

I am turning my attention instead to the coast of East Yorkshire. I do own a beach casting rod and reel, although it has been about 30 years since I fished off the coast.

I have set aside next week to put my father's estate in order, but after that I am awarding myself a week of 'me' time. My plan is to include a visit to the coast and catch a mighty denizen of the deep.

If past experience is anything to go by then I won't catch a thing except a cold. But I will not be deterred and will persevere in my quest all winter if need be.

If all else fails I will swallow a full packet of sea sickness tablets (you know how weak my stomach is) and set sail for the depths of the North Sea in search of my leviathan. I know you're out there Moby Dick. Beware! The middle aged gapper is coming to get you.

Live long and prosper.

November

2009-11-16T08:35:00.000-08:00

Halong Bay

According to my diary I should be in Halong Bay today, drifting around on a Vietnamese junk. Of course, owing to the death of my father, I'm not. I'm at home enduring my least favourite month of the year, November. Can anyone tell me anything good about this month? For me it a time of long, dark nights and perpetual wind and rain. Uggh! The only good things I can find about it are the grass doesn't need cutting and warm and cosy nights in by the fire become very appealing.

Not visiting Vietnam as planned not only dashes my long established desire to flee the English autumn for a warmer climate, it also makes achieving the challenges I set for myself a while back very difficult.

There are 20 challenges in all and I drew them up at the beginning of my gap year as a way of bringing structure to what I wanted to do with my time. I'm not going to list all 20 here, but I will review some of them.

6 of the 20 have already been achieved. They included taking a Turkish bath, coming face to face with mountain gorillas and going white water rafting. So far, so good. Others have a definite antipodean feel to them and I hope to tick them off in January and February. For example: Climb Sydney Harbour Bridge; see the sun rise over Uluru; and take an epic train journey.

Many of them appear to be in jeopardy now that I have cancelled my trip to Hong Kong and Vietnam. Visiting 10 countries I have not visited before should have been easy but now I will be 2 short of the target. And what about 'Fire a machine gun'? I put that in there because a good friend assured me that there are lots of munitions in Vietnam and that blasting away with an M16 would be a great experience and easy to achieve. Not so easy to achieve in East Yorkshire though.

Another of my challenges was optimistic to say the least. This is the one that reads: 'See the Northern Lights.' It sounds easy but if I want to do it I need to get something sorted in the next two months. I think I can hear Iceland calling.

I said that I have ticked off 6 challenges as being achieved, but at a push I could claim 7.

The dubious challenge is the one entitled: 'Appear on TV.' Now, when I set that challenge what I had in mind was either an appearance in something as a TV extra or on a quiz show, such as The Weakest Link.

Neither of those look like happening but I may be able to claim it on a technicality.

Just over a week a ago it was Remembrance Sunday. Some months ago, after a visit to the Lakes, I commented on here that if people could trek up Great Gable for a Remembrance service then the least I can do is walk down the road to my local cenotaph. This I duly did, along with my eldest son and we marked our 2 minutes of silence at 11 O'clock. The point here is that I take remembering the sacrifices of others very seriously.

I then dashed off to watch Hull City play Stoke. Once the players were on the field there was another 2 minutes of silence. Naturally, I stood in due solemnity once more. What happened next is a disgrace in every way.

There must have been some problem with the PA system as it began to make an awful racket, completely at odds with occasion. This annoyed me. The match was televised on Sky and unbeknown to me the camera zoomed in on me stood there looking somewhat bemused by the noise but wearing my poppy with pride. Unfortunately, this was the precise moment when I expressed my dismay at the harsh sound coming from the speakers around the ground and in all the glory of high definition I was televised during the 2 minutes of silence mouthing words to the effect of 'For flip sake!', or maybe something a bit stronger.

Oh, the shame.

Live long and prosper.

Quick hello

2009-11-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

Hello. I know that a few people are kind enough to follow my ramblings on here so I want to give a brief update now that the Vietnam trip has been cancelled.

Sadly, my father died on November 5th after a short illness. It all happened very fast but I am thankful for the fact that my eldest son and my daughter made it home in time say goodbye.

As anyone who has been through this knows, it is a difficult time and there is a lot to do.

I hope to be back blogging in the next few days.

Live long and prosper.

Taking Stock

2009-11-04T08:33:00.000-08:00

Incredibly, it's been 4 months since I left work. That's a third of a gap year. It seems like a good point to take stock of what has been happening.

I took time out to refresh like I had planned and now my day has more structure to it. I have yet to feel bored. Indeed, the list of things waiting to be done seems as long as ever. I still haven't cleared out the garage or tackled the painting jobs I have been meaning to do.

To date the travel has worked out brilliantly. Everywhere I have gone has been special and has meant something different. The best part has been the good friends I have met along the way.

It isn't just new friends that have made this part of my life special, it's the old ones too.

As I have commented before, time is different now. For example when I walk my dog in the morning there is no urgency to get home to go to work. This allows me time to have nice conversations with other dog walkers and realise that there are good people all around.

I am also grateful to my former friends and work colleagues who go out of their way to keep me 'in the loop' and to stay in touch through emails or invitations for drinks and meals. It's ironic that I've never really liked work Christmas do's but I'm really looking forward to them this year!

On the negative side, the Extras work that so filled me with enthusiasm has not come to anything. I am beginning to doubt it ever will. There was a phone call in August but I was out with my daughter and missed it. Had I answered it I would have got a walk-on part on Emmerdale Farm. What alarmed me was the text I got afterwards telling me how I had missed out on a valuable opportunity because I didn't answer my phone. I found the text insulting and it brought home a very valid point. That in the world of Extras work I am nothing and my agent is God, or thinks he is. If that's how it works then I don't want any part of it.

What I really like about my life since leaving work is getting up the morning and being my own boss. It's great not to have to pander to the egos of others, dance around office politics or be constantly reminded of the hierarchy and where I fit into it. I can't put a value on that, but it's certainly worth more than 5 seconds as man in pub on Emmerdale.

I apologise for ending this on a low note but I have cancelled my trip to Hong Kong and Vietnam. I was due to fly to Asia next week.

My elderly father was admitted to hospital 2 weeks ago. He is not responding to treatment. I had a long discussion with the Registrar yesterday and although there are no certainties the prognosis is not good. It would be pure folly for me to embark on a journey that was scheduled to last almost a month at this time.

So, sorry, I won't be posting news of my Vietnam Adventure on here in the near future.

Live long and prosper.

The Third Reich

2009-11-01T08:31:00.001-08:00

Hitler Salutes the memorial to the martyrs of the Beer Hall Putsch

Arbeit Macht Frei

Sonja at the Dachau Memorial

The Munich Hofbrauhaus reminded me of my school dining hall. Rows and rows of wooden tables and benches, each big enough to accommodate 8 to 10 people. On entering the place there were no empty tables so Chris and I spotted a couple of vacant seats at the end of a bench and politely asked those already sat there if we might join them.

The chap opposite was on his own and eventually he introduced himself as Martin, a travelling salesman from Manchester whose work took him all over the world.

We chatted for a while about the usual topics - what we were doing in Munich and football. Then Martin introduced a topic I had not been expecting.

'This is where it all began' he said. 'Hitler and his cronies planned the Third Reich in this place. They drank beer at these very tables.'

Up to this point I had not given much thought to the rise of Nazism and I was totally unaware of the pivotal role that the City of Munich had played in the rise of the Third Reich.

Over the course of the weekend I realised that it was impossible to ignore the events that had taken place in Munich as my feeble knowledge of history was improved by the tour guide Sonja on the free walking tour of the city and later during our visit to the former concentration camp at Dachau.

A series of political rallies and meetings in the beer halls of Munich in 1920 led to the creation of the German Workers Party, later changed by Hitler to the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), or Nazi for short. In April 1921 in Munich Hitler became the leader (Führer) of the Nazi Party.

April 1921 was also the time when the victorious nations of World War One, notably England and France, presented Germany with the bill for war reparations as agreed under The Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The cost was assessed as $33.5 billion.

The German government responded by printing more money and consequently created an unprecedented level of hyper-inflation. Before the war reparations were announced 1 US Dollar was the equivalent of 4 German Marks. By November 1923 it took an astonishing 4,000,000,000 marks to buy 1 dollar.

Hitler's first grab for power came on the evening of November 8th and the morning of November 9th, 1923 in Munich. A mesmeric speaker he brought hope and a promise of change to a country in chaos. Of course, he did not openly disclose his true intentions and manifesto.

Growing support gave him the confidence to kidnap leaders of the Bavarian government in what became known as The Beer Hall Putsch. His plan was to get these leaders to support him and become part of his new government. Threatened at gunpoint, the three kidnapped leaders feigned support for Hitler and he made the fatal error of leaving them whilst he organised his storm troopers elsewhere in Munich. The three leaders managed to slip away and next day Hitler, Göring, Himmler and a World War I military hero called Ludendorf marched with 3,000 Nazis on the centre of Munich.

The march eventually reached a police blockade and shots rang out. 16 Nazis and 3 police officers were killed (the original spin-doctor, Goebbels, later re-wrote history to say that the 3 police officers were martyrs who had died whilst trying to flee the police lines to join the Nazis). Hitler's body guard saved his life by shielding him with his body and taking 14 bullets (he lived). Hitler withdrew from the melee and ran away.

Thus ended Hitler's first attempt at seizing power. It would be 10 years before he finally achieved his ambition.

On the walking tour Sonja showed us where the fighting had taken place, near the Odeonplatz. When the Nazis came to power they erected a plaque to the 19 (including the 3 police officers) martyrs of the failed take over. Everyone who passed had to give a Nazi salute. Naturally, people sought to avoid the place and a nearby street now has golden paving to commemorate the fact that people would duck down it to avoid the Nazi memorial.

When the Nazis eventually came to power they secured only 37% of the vote. Hitler became the German Chancellor on 30th January 1933. Just 27 days later he had the excuse he needed to launch his dictatorship.

On February 27th the Reichstag Building in Berlin was the subject of an arson attack. To this day it is not clear exactly what happened but the communists were blamed. In response Hitler immediately had legislation passed that took away all civil liberties.

Hitler's storm troopers began to round up the communists. The dissidents had to be housed somewhere. In March 1933 Dachau, the concentration camp on the outskirts of Munich opened its gates for the first time.

By coincidence, luck or serendipity it was Sonja, our guide from the free tour, who was in Marienplatz on our last day in Munich to take us on the tour of Dachau.

In her early 30's, this blonde, attractive and intelligent student from Florida once more passed on her historical knowledge with a passion. Not surprising, given that her father was born in Germany in 1942 and sees himself as American, ashamed to be classed as German.

A train journey and a bus ride took us out to Dachau where Sonja explained that this was never a death camp, not like Auschwitz. Dachau was a work camp and between 1933 and 1938 it housed political prisoners.

On November 9th 1938 another event that centred on Munich took place that as to swell the numbers detained in Dachau and set the scene for one of the darkest events in history.

On this night Hitler was in Munich celebrating the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Whilst there he received news of the murder by shooting of Ernest vom Rath, a German Embassy official, by a young Jew named Herschel Grynszpan. Hitler and his cohorts seized this event as an opportunity to begin their wholesale persecution of the Jewish People and the Kristallnacht, or night of the broken glass began. This involved the mass arrests of Jews and destruction of their property and synagogues. 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, 11,911 of them being sent to Dachau.

We passed into the concentration camp through the iron gates that bear the words 'Arbeit Macht Frei' - 'Work will set you free'. Someone once asked Sonja if that was some kind of ironic joke. The answer is it wasn't. Dachau was originally built to re-educate people and turn them into useful members of the Reich. During its early years some of the political prisoners were actually released when their sentences were deemed to have been served.

From 1938 Dachau became a model for the other concentration camps, more than 1500 of them. Dachau had a sizeable training wing to allow German officers to learn how to control and break the spirit of the inmates.

Touring the camp two things became apparent to me. The first was Sonja's passion for enabling those on her tour to understand what went on here. The two most chilling areas were the cell block where prisoners were tortured and murdered and the gas chamber and crematorium. No one knows for sure how many died here. It is estimated at about 48,000 people. When the American liberators arrived they found bodies stacked up in the room adjacent to the incinerators - too numerous for the crematorium to deal with.

Sonja refused to enter either of these areas for fear of becoming de-sensitised to the horror of it all.

By contrast, what also became apparent to me was my own lack of emotion. I don't mean I didn't feel sad or was unmoved by what I saw and learned, but I wasn't moved to tears. I think that after the poverty of Africa and the horrors of the genocide memorial in Kigali maybe I have started to become slightly de-sensitised myself.

The final part of the tour was where Sonja became really passionate about her subject. This was the memorial to the dead and the epic words 'Never again'.

It is those words that so enrage Sonja. She turned to the group and said:

'This isn't just about the history of Germany, this is about the history of mankind. It's wrong to think that it stopped in 1945. Since then there have been genocides, including Cambodia in the 1970's and in 1994 in Rwanda. The United Nations introduced the term 'ethnic cleansing' to describe what happened in Bosnia so they could claim that there had been no more genocides in Europe since 1945.

'My own government detains people without trial and tortures them in Guantanamo Bay. It is wrong to believe we have learned from our mistakes, we haven't.'

By coincidence the book I am reading at the moment is Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by that inveterate traveller, Paul Theroux. Speaking about his visit to the killing fields of Cambodia he clearly shares Sonja's sentiment. I'll leave you with his words:

'The traveller's conceit is that barbarism is something singular and foreign to be encountered on some pinched and parochial backwater. The traveller journeys to this remote place and it seems to be so: he is offered the worst atrocities that can be served up by a sadistic government. And then, to his shame, he realises that they are identical to ones advocated and diligently applied by his own government. As for the sanctimony of people who seem blind to he fact that mass murder is still an annual event, look at Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet, Burma and elsewhere - the truer shout is not 'Never again' but 'Again and again.'

Acknowledgements:

www.thehistoryplace.com

www.thethirdreichruins.com

Wikipedia

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux

New Europe Tours - Munich

Serendipity

2009-10-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

Das Glockenspiel

Another good knight out

Seems like a nice boy

The trip to Munich began at Terminal 5 at Heathrow. Given all the adverse publicity when it opened last year this caused me some concerns but they were groundless. Although very soulless, the airport is an extremely modern building. All glass and chrome. It is dominated by British Airways and their check in took about a minute. All very impressive.

Emerging from baggage claim at Munich I was greeted with a bear hug from my eldest son, Chris. Airport arrivals are a great places for reunions, but whilst I have seen lots of them this was the first time I can recall being a recipient. It was a nice start to a fantastic weekend.

One of my favourite words in the rich lexicon of the English language is Serendipity - making fortunate discoveries by accident. Our first 24 hours in Munich were very serendipitous and shaped our stay.

Having found our hotel, Chris and I set off for food followed by the search for an atmospheric bar. Wandering through the clean streets with no real idea of where we were headed we found the perfect place - the Hofbrauhaus, the best known beer hall in Munich.

This was everything I expected of Bavaria. Men in lederhosen wearing felt hats, a 6 piece oompah band, ladies in tight fitting bodices and flowing dresses holding large pretzels aloft and, of course, gallons of amazing beer.

'Svei beer bitte' brought to us huge one litre glasses of foaming beer. The place was packed and there was an air of jollity and good humour that I have only found in Dublin before. Maybe it was all a bit touristy, but there were certainly a lot of Germans enjoying themselves - dancing to the band and singing drinking songs.

Next morning we gravitated towards the centre again, at Marienplatz, home of one of the world's most disappointing tourist attractions. The square is dominated by the gothic looking Neues Rathaus, or new town hall. Built in 1908 the structure houses a famous glockenspiel, which whirrs into motion 3 times a day.

As the appointed hour of 11 O'clock drew near there were hundreds of people gathered to witness the glockenspiel show. Dozens of people held cameras aloft, desperate to record every part of this fascinating event for posterity.

The minute hand reached twelve and the crowd strained with excitement. Then it moved to one minute past, two minutes past......nothing.

I know what you are thinking - 'Hang on. This is Germany, a land famed for reliability and precision'.

True. But not everything works like clockwork, not even clocks. The glockenspiel relies upon Wolfgang to set it in motion and Wolfgang is not the most precise on men. Some days, presumably after a heavy session in the Hofbrauhaus, he doesn't show up at all!

At 11.05 the mechanical chimes finally struck into action. What a bloody racket. I defy anyone to stand in that square and tell me what the tune is. There just isn't one, only the clanging of lots of out of tune chimes. Throwing the contents of your cutlery draw down the stairs would be more tuneful.

One by one the lofted cameras drooped down. Then, 6 minutes in something happens. The crowd give a collective 'Ooo' as a medieval pageant springs into life, complete with jousting knights representing Bavaria and France. Eventually the French knight falls back and the movement shifts to some celebratory dancers doing a sort of Gay Gordon affair, with the emphasis very much on the gay part.

The grand finale is a golden owl who pops out and spreads his wings. Fascinating.

This is truly the worst tourist attraction I have ever seen. There is lots of footage of it on You Tube. But beware, it lasts an excruciating 15 minutes.

Chris and I never saw the end as we had become embroiled in our second serendipitous event - discovering a free walking tour of the city.

The tour took well over three hours and was well presented by the excellent Sonja - a mature student from Florida who is studying for her masters in comparative literature at Munich University. Together we criss-crossed the city, seeing all the major sights and learning about Munich's history.

Sonja even introduced us to the best of the local beers - the Augustiener, which we drank in a quiet bar at the end of the tour.

The tours are operated by a European company and the free tour was one of several they operated, although the others are not free. One of these is a beer tour - a beer hall crawl round Munich that includes some 'free' beer and jaegermeisters (a weird, alcoholic beverage that tastes like cough medicine). It began at the central station, not far from our hotel at 6pm. Unbeknown to me, Chris arranged to meet some of those from the free tour on the beer tour.

Thus it was that I came to be standing at the railway station with a host of people much younger than me and wondering what I had let myself in for.

I needn't have worried. It was a wonderful, drunken evening where I got to meet so many friendly and interesting people from all round the world - the delightful Claire from Melbourne, Annabelle from Brazil, Varun from Auckland, Cam from Vancouver and others from Russia, Scotland and Canada.

Most of these guys were travelling around Europe and were at various points in their journeys. Varun even had business cards announcing him as a 'roving ambassador'. These enchanting young people were such a contrast to the silver surfers I encountered in Buttermere the week before.

At one beer hall, Cam returned from the loo laughing at the fact that there was a machine in there that dispensed something called the 'Travel Pussy'. Intrigued, I coughed up half of the 4 euro cost and Cam shot back to the Gents excitedly. He returned with one of those little plastic eggs that usually contain novelties at fairgrounds and the seaside. The contents of this egg were very novel indeed.

Cam broke open the egg to reveal a red plastic bag, a sachet of lubricant and some instructions. The bag turned out to be an imitation vagina, which Cam duly inflated only to find that there was no way to deflate it. Our new girlfriend accompanied us on the rest of the tour until eventually she split on us late on. To be fair, I don't think she was the faithful type and it would never have lasted.

At our last hostelry I did something I have never done before - Karaoke! In the circumstances I thought I did a passable version of Coldplay's 'The Scientist', especially the 'Aaaa Ooooo Oooo' bit towards the end, and was joined on stage by my son. Ok, Simon Cowell wouldn't have been impressed, but I was sufficiently emboldened to follow this up later with my Elvis impression - 'The Wonder of You'. Yes, I was drunk.

I had just the best night out, but by the time it got to midnight I knew that I had peaked. After much handshaking and hugs I took my leave of Chris and the other youngsters. They made me smile with their endorsement of what a cool Dad I was.

Leaving my new best friends forever I made may way to the door and encountered two problems. One, I hadn't been paying attention to where we were going, so I wasn't quite sure where we were or where our hotel was. Two, there were two of everything. I picked one of the two paths to my right and staggered off into the night.

Next morning I was headache free, which was a huge but pleasant surprise and a testament to the purity of the Bavarian beer. But best of all, I had enjoyed a brilliant time with yet more lovely people. And that, as I know by now, is what travel is really all about.

Guten Tag

2009-10-27T07:49:00.001-07:00

Wainwright and I are home again after a great few days in Munich.

I will reveal what we got up to in a couple of blogs. I'm not very good at history so I hadn't realised that Munich played such a key role in the rise of the Third Reich. Also, my son and I visited Dachau on the outskirts of the city and it is appropriate to divide the blogs into the serious and light hearted aspects of the trip.

Part of being a struggling writer, or in my case, a would-be writer, is the need for self-promotion. It feels so egotistic and pushy. But unless you have a large publishing house behind you it is necessary if anyone is going to actually read your words.

The BBC has a competition at the moment for people to write their story - something that has happened to them - in 1500 words or less. It can be found on the BBC website under 'My Story'. Part of the prize is to have your story published as a paperback book. According to the website, the judges are not too concerned with grammar and syntax, just damn good stories so you might want to have a bash.

I have tapped out my own story and the BBC have accepted it for publication on their website. If you want to find out a bit more about this particular middle aged gapper then go to:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mystory/stories/survival/150149/

That ends my shameless self promotion for today.

Finally, an update on Appa, the boy I am sponsoring at the orphanage near Lake Bunyoni, Uganda. Crystal at the orphanage has written to me to say:

Appa's other name is Paol. When I went to check on him at school I found he is having no school books. I let him know that you have chosen to sponsor him and we are in the process of getting school books and a large size uniform and sweater made for him...he is truly one of our proudest and happiest students because it is his first time ever in school.

I know that a few people who were with me in Africa read this blog and they have kindly expressed an interest in Appa's progress so I'll publish a few lines about his development on here every now and again. Appa is the tall boy wearing the hat on the extreme left of the above picture (click on it to enlarge).

Live long and prosper.

More travels

2009-10-21T01:50:00.001-07:00

Don't mention the war

There is very much the air of the seasoned traveller about me as I write this, my last blog of the week.

My holdall, with Wainwright waiting patiently beside it, is on my bed ready to be packed yet again. I'm flying to Munich tomorrow to meet up with my eldest son who is stationed in Germany with the Army.

I've never been to Germany before and it marks the 6th 'new' country to be visited since I left work in July. I'm well on my way to hitting my target of 10 unvisited countries within a year.

Country number 7 will be China when I fly out to Hong Kong next month for a 2 night stop-over.

The Vietnamese Embassy have kindly granted me a visa so Hong Kong will be followed by Country number 8 when I make the short trip to Hanoi and begin and extensive tour of Vietnam from north to south. The bulk of my travel, from Hanoi to Saigon (Ho Chi Min City) will be in the security of Exodus Travel once more as we travel by air, sea and rail between these two epic cities (note to self 1 - stock up on travel sickness pills for the sea bit of the journey).

Then comes the bit that both worries and excites me. Whilst the rest of the Exodus group go home I will remain in Vietnam for another 8 days and so far I haven't booked any accommodation for those days.

I could be bold and see where the wind takes me from Saigon, but in a country where English is not widely spoken this seems a bit dodgy. I did invest in a set of Teach Yourself Vietnamese cd's many months ago, but so far I haven't progressed beyond Xin Chao (Hello) and Tam Biet (Thank you).

'Excuse me, but is this the correct bus to Vung Tau?' looks like being way beyond my grasp of linguistics. Back to pointing and shouting then.

At present I fancy taking the 50 minute flight from Saigon to Phu Quoc, an idyllic tropical island off the coast of Cambodia, and being a beach bum for a few days. I've also been watching a lot of Robson Green's Extreme Fishing lately so the idea of some serious fishing and snorkelling also appeals.

Once I've posted this I'll be on the internet looking for my ideal beach hut to get away from it all and fortify myself for the horror that is Christmas.

I've already been busy on the web today and booked a very eco friendly B&B in Christchurch for the last 2 nights of my trip around New Zealand in February. I am making the 3 week jaunt with my friend Peter (if you've been reading this blog for a while you may recall that Pete and I usually have a boy's weekend away each year where I feel the need to dispel loudly any notion that we are a gay couple, even though we look very much like one. Me more than him, according to someone Pete and I met at Beverley Races recently).

Peter is not one to endure discomfort so our accommodation in NZ will have all the usual amenities, like hot water and beds. To balance this out I have gone for the opposite end of the scale when arranging my 12 day trip around Australia, which I am undertaking alone before joining Pete in Auckland.

Based upon my success at surviving the Youth Hostel at Buttermere last week, all the accommodation I have booked so far in Australia is in hostels. These are all right in the heart of the cities I am staying in and are at ridiculously low prices. Of course the downside is the need to share a room with other travellers (note to self 2 - stock up on ear plugs). I imagine that most of those I share with will be genuine surfers and not the silver variety I encountered in the Lakes.

The hostel I am staying at in Sydney is a disused railway station and I have booked myself into a 4 berth converted railway carriage for my 3 night stay. How cool is that? It also establishes a rail motif which I take up later on with overnight trips on the iconic India-Pacific and Ghan railways from Sydney to Adelaide and then from Adelaide to Alice Springs.

I've still got the last keg of my Australian adventure to arrange - from Alice Springs to Uluru to see the sun rise on this enigmatic rock that for many is a major symbol of the land down under.

So, I can't stay chatting to you all day. I've got bags to pack, Euros to obtain, beach huts to find, buses across the outback to book and youth hostels to evaluate. It's a full time job being a middle aged gapper you know. But please, try not to feel too sorry for me.

Live long and prosper.