Journey

Travel is exciting. The processes we go through when planning, packing and setting off on a journey is all part of the ritual. How many outfits to take, what time to set off for a timeous arrival at check in. How many books to take - all part of the preparation for an adventure. My first couple of trips as a youngster were punctuated by travel sickness. Travelling through Wales on the backseat of a coach in the early sixties proved too much for my stomach. Similarly, my first flight on a BAC111 to Jersey from the then Speke airport also set me off. I am relieved to say that I improved with time.

My longest flight came in 2000 when I took my two children on a visit to my cousin in South Africa. Fourteen hours - far too long really but we all coped well. Unfortunately we had a four hour stop-over at Paris Charles De Gaulle, with a courtesy meal that affected my son. On arrival he had food poisoning from some less than fresh crevettes and spent three days very sick until we purchased some suppositories that sorted him out. 

The South African adventure was fantastic. We spent three days at the Pilanesberg game reserve, having close encounters with hippos, giraffes and twin cheetah cubs. We barbequed, swam in the Indian Ocean at Umhlanga near Durban and met real Zulu tribesmen and women who performed a dance in full costume on the lawn in front of our accommodation there. 

It was the first of many adventures with the kids. Two years later we headed off to Egypt. The Valley of the Kings, Temple of Luxor, Temple of Karnak,  Temple of Philae and the Aswan Dam. I liked to educate them through travel. They longed for a simple beach holiday but I am not that kind of Mum. 

The next trip was to Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast with visits to Pompeii and Positano. I love Italy. My parents took me to Venice where I returned on honeymoon. We went to the Lido and a gondolier lifted me on his back and ran with me across St Mark's Square. My new husband was flabbergasted and asked. "Where do you know him from?" Silly man - but it was so exciting!

My more recent trips have been without the kids in the company of the man in my life. We have been to many of the Greek Islands in the last decade. We began in Kefalonia, then Crete, my favourite. As you can already tell, I am a big history buff. The Homer poem about the island of Crete caught my imagination in grammar school and was always a future destination. I was not disappointed - the museum at Heraklion was incredible.  The ancient city of Knossos, although rebuilt in simulation, was incredible. 

I loved the beauty of the harbour in Kos and the ruins in Rhodes. Greece is so lovely. The weather is usually hot but not too humid, the food is lovely and there is so much to see. No doubt we will return - Covid put the blockers on most foreign travel but I still have long list of destinations to tick off. 

Journey

It’s a cliché I hear,
‘travel broadens the mind’
but I’m happy to know
that our travels abroad
enhanced our education.
The journey often long,
patience tested,
rewarded on arrival
at our far-flung destination.

What we have experienced.
the things we have learned,
the grandeur, the majesty
of ancient civilisation,
the diversity of people,
the wonders of creation.
Looking outwards
to understand
the global situation.

To those who do not travel
who stay insular at home
I recommend a journey
to Paris or to Rome.
just to breathe another’s air
walk in another’s shoes,
A single step begins
a journey to your own imagination.

Spot press - Baby arrived this morning

Thanks for reading. Adele

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An idiot abroad - Keep an open mind.

I have travelled abroad since I was 8 years old.  First trip was only to Belgium with family - we flew to Ostend and had a great time at The White Horse Inn. I has drawn money from my Post Office savings account and bought a traditional Netherlands costume and a costume doll.  I loved the exotic, the new languages, learning to sing and dance to the Flemish Farmer's Dance.  Dad bought me the record. I still remember the some of the words. That was the start of my romance with the world beyond home. I fell in love with new countries, new languages and different cultures.

I have rarely been to the same place twice, ( and not just to avoid the need to apologise for my first visit). I have just always believed that life is too short not to explore and enjoy as much of the world as I can.  I travelled in mostly in Europe until I was 15.  In 1969 I went on a dancing tour to Switzerland as one of a team of  twelve British under 12's. My passport was stamped in France, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein en route.  I still have it.  I went to Lisbon when Portugal was still under military rule, to Yugoslavia when it was still a communist country, to Italy, to Morocco, (where my Dad tried to exchange me for two camels and a rug) and to Majorca, when there was only one hotel in Palma Nova, and very few people spoke English.

For me, travelling overseas means having a complete change from the British way of life. When abroad, I 'do as the Romans do': I eat foreign food, try to communicate in the appropriate language and I get off the beaten track to see how people really live in other counties. I have never believed that everyone in the world should learn to speak English. I love the sound of new words, the challenge of communicating with people who are different from me and seeing their faces light up with delight that at least I am trying to understand them. 

It is challenging and rewarding. It needs preparation and sometimes detailed planning but my goodness, it has been worth it. In 2005, I went with my husband and children to Turkey on a water-sports holiday and it was great fun but mid-may through I decided that we should get away from the coast and see something of  the country and culture. We booked a two day trip into the hills, found ourselves at Ephesus and there I experienced an encounter with the single remaining column of The Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  On the drive back, we saw the ramshackle home of a widow, who would not survive if villagers did not give her food.

In 2000, recently divorced, I took my children to South Africa and experienced the extremes of vast wealth and real poverty. In 2002 we cruised the Nile to satisfy my own life long fascination with ancient Egypt. While staying in Luxor, we were followed down the road by a man in a horse-drawn buggy who wanted us to go to a market. I wasn't there to shop, so to avoid him, I led the children to the opposite side of the street.  Suddenly, there was a dreadful smell.  I smelt it long before I saw the poor devil coming towards us whose 'galabia' was completely saturated with excrement. None of the locals seemed to notice him. It was just one of many life-changing experiences that have filled me with a love for my homeland and compassion for others.

I am very grateful that by some quirk of fate, I was born in Britain, during a time of sustained peace, into a loving and generous family, in a time of plenty. We are so lucky. My Dad always said, "We have the best climate in the world but the worse bloody weather." My travels have taught me that we have so much more.

We have fresh, drinkable water and enough to bathe in, even enough to waste. We have plentiful food.  Our British produce is wonderful and we have the pick of the best from the rest of the world. We have the best healthcare system on the planet.  So why are we so unhappy? Why do we drink too much alcohol and damage our own health through over-eating and lack of physical activity. Oh, the idiots are not abroad.  They are right here.

My advice to anyone who is dissatisfied with our green and pleasant land, is to go and see how the other half of the world have to live.  Don't go to the Costas, demanding full English breakfast and football on big screen TV's. Go and see some of the real world. Then tell me that you don't have enough, that you are being short-changed by having to pay National Insurance and tax out of your pay. If you are unhappy with the NHS, take up your bed and walk in another person's shoes, where cholera infects the only source of water, where there are no antibiotics and no hope of recovery from most major illnesses. 

Once you have seen how much less green things are on the other side of some fences, then you will appreciate the desire of the down-trodden, the hungry and the war weary to come to our better way of life. I promise you, that no matter what you may believe, our lives are better than most.  This really is the greatest country on earth.

Be Happy

Be grateful you can turn a tap and pour yourself a drink:
In Africa they walk miles for fresh water, you barely have to blink.
Be grateful, there hasn't been real hardship here since 1945:
In Yemen, every day, starving people struggle to survive.
Be mindful that we have a democratic right to choose:
In other nations, all they have is lose, lose, lose.
Be generous, we have so much, we throw so much away.
Please give to the unfortunate who fall along life's way.
Be British and be happy, benevolent and true.
And trust me when I say that life is good for me and you.

Thanks for reading. Adele

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Holidays - a change is as good...

I am definitely not a big holiday girl. It doesn't matter whether I get away once or twice a year to the same old, same old resort, just to drink sangria and bask in sun-shine.  Most of my childhood, my parents were too busy to take holidays for more than a few days.  We had a few, very pleasant short breaks but never more than a week. They had a pub to run, four of us to provide for and Summer was the busiest time of year, after Christmas, Easter and Spring Bank.

From being young, I had a list.  A list of places that I would like to see and things that I would like to do. It is over fifty years since I began the list and there are still things outstanding but for the most part, they have been seen, visited, attempted, mastered and ticked off.  I am very determined and hate to give up on anything, as anyone who knows me well, will confirm.

I have always achieved my goals, sometimes after a failed first attempt. Here are a few of the highlights so far.  I danced for my country in Switzerland at the age of ten and that same year danced in the Royal Albert Hall. I was the youngest Imperial Society Associate at 16 and began teaching dance the same year. I sang to a Steinway piano at the Glasgow School of Dramatic Art and Music aged 45 and won a photographic competition the same year. I swan with dolphins in Florida in 1997 and dropped 26 floors on the Terror Tower.  I have had close encounters with Red squirrels, badgers and have flown a Harris Hawk and a Barn owl.

I took my children to South Africa to see the big five and shook hands with a Zulu warrior, fulfilling a promise to my cousin made when I was 13. I took them to the Valley of The Kings, Karnack and Luxor - a promise I made to myself at eleven. I took them to Pompeii - another promise from my own school days.  I took them to see the Roman City of Ephesus - although this was really a lucky accident. I sailed round the Canaries in an ocean-going yacht, I flew over the Alps, I saw Courtney Pine perform live and I threw my own pottery. I gained a degree in English at 50, had a poem carved into a stone memorial in 2014. I performed in operetta on real theatre stage for the first time the same year.

Earlier this year I went to Crete for the first time and fulfilled one of the last biggies on the list.  The Palace at Knossos was everything that I had hoped it would be, from the description in Homer's Odyssey. The trip was the ultimate in wish-fulfilment and yet it had a depressive effect.  The list is almost completed.  There may be no more firsts to aim for.  I am not saying that there are no places left to go or things to accomplish. I have just done most of what I set out to do. The trouble is the highs are so great that the times in between seem a little low. 

Oh but then again, there is still India (a promise that I made to my father) and The Bolshoi to visit, La Scala in Milan, (not to sing - just to see) and I hope to learn to play an instrument some day, perhaps sing in a band. I might try to get a painting hung in the Royal Academy or fly a light aircraft.  I still haven't been to Cornwall or been up in helicopter - so watch this space. And like all writers there are still books I want to have published. Like I said at the beginning, I am not much of a holiday person but just, "to live would be a really big adventure". JM Barrie. Peter Pan.

I must say that though - I am sure the onset of this season is why holidays were invented...

Summer’s End  

Season of drips and sodden wetness, 

as sudden bursts cloud over

seeping down our trench coat necks
and torrents wash from
overflowing gutter pipes.

Wipers beat a frantic rhythm,
swishing to swipe clear
cascading curtains that blur
the blinded dashers,  
umbrellas turned to face the wind.

There is persistent drumming

on the hatchback roof  
but on the high street,
a beacon beckons,
selling sunshine and blue skies.

Windows offer Canarias,

or Caribbean cruises,
as super-moon high-tides
smash and swamp the promenade,
retreating with a foaming swill.

Next day the wind is gone,

the sky is clear, the soft sun shines
and switched off chlorophyl
displays deep red hues of jasmine
left clinging to the garden fence.

Ah, we are in England

now that Autumn’s here.
Conkers shine in leaf falls,
fire smokes over garden walls,
berries burst to ripe.

And before we go to sleep

we store away for Winter’s keep,
shake out the struggle rugs
and snuggle up to ear-mark
kinder shores in glossy brochures.

Happy Holiday Planning Season everyone.  Thanks for reading.  Adele

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