I Came, I Saw, I Suffered Immensely
Here are some interesting things about the word “denial”, regarding travel.
1. Denial is not a river in Egypt. (Ask this chap, if you don’t believe me). It’s spelled differently. This is why puns are all contemptible: they’re all about perverting our language to fit humour. Well, not in this blog. (more…)
My thanks to Mike, Pam, Kim and everyone else working so hard this weekend at the 2nd Annual Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) event in New York this weekend, for making a livestream session so fascinating that I was glued to my screen all afternoon despite glorious sunshine and England’s final, desperate and ultimately doomed attempt to stay in the World Cup…
…and for allowing me to be part of it (TBEX, I mean, not Germany stuffing England) – because as part of the Community Keynote this afternoon, this piece was read out to a packed auditorium. (And it was still packed afterwards! Well, maybe the doors were locked. I don’t want to get bigheaded by making wild assumptions – my ego deserves the facts).
The TBEX meet is an event where hundreds of clever, industrious, outgoing people converge on one spot from all over the world, chat about various things, learn some useful stuff, and then go out drinking heavily, spending the next day in a pain-laced fog of self-recrimination. At least, this is what I’ve been told by people who attended this year. I’m only going on word-of-mouth, mind.
TBEX ’11?
It’s in Vancouver.
And I’ll be turning up for that one.
How about you?
…………….
You may see a few changes in here. I’m tweaking, based on some sage advice from TBEX and also because it’s long overdue some tidying up.
If anything looks unbearably screwy, just holler.
That doesn’t apply to the writing, of course.
Outside Cambridge University’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, you’ll find a curious sight. For some reason, someone has embedded a couple of metal-filled footprints between two paving slabs.
Feeling the urge to prise them up? You’d be in for a surprise.
You’re not looking at filled-in footprints. You’re looking at the soles of the feet of a life-size statue of artist Antony Gormley, buried head-down. (Name sound familiar? He also did this).
It’s like the aftermath of Iron Man suffering power failure at high altitude.
Stand on those soles, and you become one half of an approximately 12-foot-long sculpture of the human body, mirrored at your feet and rooted beneath you in cast-iron symmetry….
On page 19 of Stephanie Lee’s ebook The Art Of Solo Travel, I’m suddenly faced with my age.
The days of traveller’s cheques are over. (more…)
Fevered Mutterings v1: November 2004.
An early sign that I wasn’t cut out for Real Life.
……….
Asgaard clambered over the final ichor-streaked boulder.
The last vicious Blood-Wyyrm lay behind him, innards strewn akimbo across the cold rock-cut passage floor. He had taken a fearful bite upon the thigh, but he shrugged it off with the weary practice of a man shrugging off many hardships through life. Briefly his upbringing, so far away in the balmy sun-kissed rural lands of Yrrkshur, swam before his eyes, and a lump formed in his throat as he remembered worrying the sheep and mucking out the stables on his father’s farm, before Yrxgrlknx the Unpronounceable raided the farmsteads and Asgaard became a bitter orphan.
I’ve just acquired a shiny new toy. It’s dead good.
But a camera is only as good as the person behind the lens. This means my camera is…um….
