Istanbul Calling

Dear Friends

I have emigrated to Turkey. I know this will come as a shock and, yes, you deserve an explanation. This was a decision uncharacteristically made in some haste and was precipitated by Monseigneur Abbot's victory in the election a week ago last Saturday. I've been fearing the worst for some time and decided to make contingency plans should what happened happen. Well, it happened. As soon as the result came through I pressed "go" and made my escape. I flew out the next day, have taken religious orders and will now be known as Zakoor Hamdin bin Gardi.

Ok. I've actually been to a conference in Istanbul, but this doesn't mean the previous weekend's result is not weighing heavily upon me. In fact, I have rounded up a small but incredibly well educated revolutionary army here at the conference, consisting mainly of deceptively feisty Swedish and Canadian post-structuralistists. We are currently planning our next move. So, fear not Australia. Once we've settled on some shared definitions, developed some guidelines, notified our line-managers, set up a web page and twitter account, and picked up some last minute trinkets, help is well and truly on its way. 

First impressions of Turkey: there's something weird going on with the cats and dogs. I mean, yes, there are plenty of 'em. No surprises there. But they are seriously everywhere: in bank queues, on the trams, hanging out in the bazaars. But the really weird thing is that they loll about like it's flaming bush-week, and just seem to flop down and grab a few zeds, anywhere, anytime, utterly indifferent to the human traffic around them. And in a city of 15 million, there's a bit of human traffic. This is particularly true of the dogs; check out this lot.

All, I hasten to add, definitely breathing. But yell and scream as I might, I couldn't get so much as a twitch or raised eye-brow out of any of them. I mean, it's a noisy place, Istanbul. A lot's going on. Clearly nobody has told the animals.

Which brings me seamlessly to a second observation. Despite the bustle of the place - the harbour, for example, is a blur of criss-crossing ferries, water taxis and super tankers, and despite the endless markets and stalls and the suicidal driving and the torrents of people heading somewhere - despite all this, nobody seems in much of a hurry (see harbour view from our gracious digs).

Everywhere you go, people are standing around, chatting, waiting, smoking. Sure, people harass you to buy stuff but it's harassment of the gentlest kind. I've met a few Turkish people from other parts of the country and they seem to see Istanbul as an overgrown and heartless behemoth but, well, I've seen plenty worse. Locals seemed to go out of their way to help even the pastiest foreigner and, apart from a couple of my female colleagues reporting being ass-pinched on the tram (and, really, what better way to promote inter-cultural dialogue than a well timed and sympathetically aimed ass-pinch?), Istanbul seemed pretty sane to me.

By way of apparent contradiction: restaurant service. Empty plates and glasses last about a nano-second in front of you before they are whisked politely away. Yes, they're no doubt keen to get you in and out, but it's also a sign that - as often happens in countries that have not yet been thoroughly neo-liberalised - most retail outlets have an over-abundance of staff meaning that most of the time they're just looking for something to do. Not a sophisticated assessment of Turkish micro-economics, I grant you, but it's all I've got. (Click the link to see aforementioned revolutionary army preparing for the battle ahead with some local victuals.)

 http://youtu.be/Vy2148Et8Yc
  
Still, I hear the more high-minded amongst you asking whether I've done anything here other than feed my face and admire the fauna. Well, seeing is believing. Towit: check out the inside of Istanbul's Blue Mosque as well as a couple of very pious locals seeking spiritual renewal.

There were also plenty of visits to the bazaars. It is said that the old city's Grand Bazaar (see pic) has 4000 shops crammed into a few interconnected under-cover streets. This is all the more difficult to get one's head around when you consider that they all essentially sell one of four things: gold, jewelry, silk or leather. How do they all make a living? For the little it's worth, I found the experience both exhilarating and oddly deflating; abuzz with humanity and beautiful objects and yet how does one value - let alone buy - anything when there are a zillian of exactly the same thing within spitting distance? For those who've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you'll know that the Total Perspective Vortex is a machine in which one is forced to look at and contemplate one's insignificance compared the vastness of outer space. Perhaps I lack the born shopper's gene, but the Central Bazaar is a bit like that.

 
Then there's the spice bazaar (see below). Again, lots of people doing pretty much the same thing although the smells and abundant - and quite varied - Turkish delight seemed to dampen my existential agony.

The very old Galata Tower was also climbed, by which I mean Darren and I caught the lift to the top. Built in the late 1300s, it has both Byzantine and Ottoman history and, as a result, features of both. Much as I'd like to tell you about them, though, I'll just offer that the you get a fair old view of the city up the top. 

 Although no stranger to life threatening scrapes, a few members of the GRA (Gardy's Revolutionary Army) did see unexpected action. There were more student protests during the week around Taksim Square where some of the group were staying. Nothing to worry about - at least for us - but not a few innocent bystanders got an unwelcome free taste of tear gas. Sadly, another student was killed on the Thursday and this precipitated whistling into the night across the city.

On happier matters, not far from the conference we found an open square that was filled with late night "bars". I say "bars" because no alcohol is served. Instead, people gather to talk, drink tea, smoke the Hookah and play Backgammon. Seeing this reminded me of stumbling across poetry reading in the front bar of the White House pub in Limerick; it does my old heart good to know that this sort of thing still happens somewhere in the world (see pic of couple of locals backgammoning).

Purely for research purposes, my arm was twisted into sampling the Hookah (see pic of me with dopey expression mid-spinout). As Emily, the GRA's in-house Hookah oficianado, put it, it's sweet and has none of the throat burn of cigarettes. I take all this on board but, on balance, was not among the converted. As for Darren Powell, my seemingly mild-mannered, clean living PhD student however, that, I'm afraid, is another story.....

And so, purely by way of relief from my feeble rambling, some poetry. Orhan Veli Kanik was an Istanbul local who lived in the first half of the 20th century. From what I can tell, he was a bit of a modernist, rejecting classical Turkish verse structures and rhythms while trying to write more about everyday life than was hitherto the norm.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.
A bird flutters round your skirt;
On your brow, is there sweat? Or not ? I know.
Are your lips wet? Or not? I know.
A silver moon rises beyond the pine trees:
I can sense it all in your heart's throbbing.
I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. 

Next stop, Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Best to all.

MG  

Almeria Calling

Beunas dias (it’s Spanish for “Hey good lookin’!” or something)

Yes, Gardy’s Excellent Blog makes an unexpected and yet hugely anticipated return after quite a hiatus (is that Spanish too?). This fun-packed edition comes to you from the Andalucian city of Almeria where I’m being hosted by Álvaro Sicilia-Camacho, a Spanish academic and all-round good egg I met in Leeds in 2006. It’s my second time here and the Spanish hospitality is once again working its magic. More of this later.

First to air travel. There will be those amongst you who have heard quite enough of my fear of flying stories so I’ll just say that most of my trips begin with some near death, or at least near disaster experience such as loss of passport minutes before take-off. With time to kill in Brisbane I cruised the travel knick-knack shop and realised that there was something I actually needed; one of those colourful thingmibobs you tie to your non-descript K-Mart suitcase in order to identify the bloody thing should you cheat death (once more!) and arrive at your destination. Anyway, I found these kids luggage labels in the shape of various beasties.

Having settled on the green pig over the blue giraffe (see piccie) it suddenly struck me that I needed a European power adaptor for Spain. So I opened my suitcase to check whether the American one I packed was going to the do the trick. It wasn’t, so I picked up my bags and headed in the direction of the adaptor stand only for the entire contents of said suitcase – undies, dental floss, slightly embarrassing personal creams, the lot – to scatter across half the floor space of the shop. Lesser travelers would have rolled their eyes, screamed ‘The pig made me do it!” and cursed this shocking start to proceedings. Not I. Nonchalantly I scooped up the sky blue and red Rios, content in the knowledge that ones customary travel blooper was now safely behind one.

Traveling from Brisbane instead of Sydney to Singapore means that you get the old 747s. I can remember being amazed by the size and ambience of the gracious interior the first time I got on one. Compared to the A380 though, which you get from Singers to London, they now feel like being trapped in a clapped-out 120Y, even more so given that five minutes before being shepherded aboard they announced the 747’s in-flight entertainment system was out of service! Meu Deus! Only fellow nervous flyers will fully appreciate what a set-back this is. QANTAS kindly said that they were going to print off $30 book and magazine vouchers (this, apparently, would take no time since the vouchers were currently being printed on a photocopier in an office somewhere in inner-eastern Sydney), distribute them, and then give people time to go fossicking in the book-shops before re-herding the cats onto the plane. Let’s just say that the moment called for some impromptu and seriously positive self-talk (“pull yourself together”, “worse things happen at sea” etc etc). I determined not to allow QANTAS to buy-off my outrage, refused the voucher offer and chose to face the rest of the journey with the stoicism for which Gardy’s Excellent Blog is justly famous.

Singers-London: I can offer no greater praise for the A380 than to report that (as well as not catching on fire) it’s so comfortable I slept for something like 6 hours on the London leg. This is unprecendented although admittedly kicked along by my new knockout pills. The amazing thing about the A380 is that, to begin with, it hardly feels like it’s going fast enough to get off the ground. And then, even for a nervous Nelly like me, if you close your eyes and put on a bit of Metallica you can almost forget you’re on a plane. I liken it more to one long elevator trip except with food and grog thrown in. Naturally I took full toll of the in-flight entertainment, during the time I was compos anyway.

Two days in London followed. My somewhat last minute accommodation arrangements landed me, without a shadow of doubt, in the world’s smallest hotel room. In fact, ‘hotel room’ is a massive exaggeration. Come to think of it, ‘room’ would be an exaggeration. Let’s settle for hotel ‘shelf space’. Imagine you could rent out your sock draw for £55 a night and you’re on the way to feeling my pain.

My digs were in a Bayswater backstreet. Rather nice area actually and Her Maj was good enough to put on a bit of a welcoming party just for me (see video). Very touching. Official engagements out of the way, I ventured out for a bit of church spotting on Friday and Saturday. For various reasons, both these days are not much chop for looking at churches; most are closed and I was only able to get into two.



The first, St James, Spanish Place, is a Roman Catholic church in Paddington (piccie on right). This beauty began life as a chapel in the 18th century but was completed during the 19th. As you can see, the style is early Gothic but was built long, long after Gothic’s heyday. The colour and movement of Gothic was seen, apparently, as a way of bringing the punters back to church.

Second, the amazing St. Bartholomew the Great (below), not to be confused with St. Bartholomew the Lesser round the corner. It’s just near the Barbican and at the end of a tiny lane called, of all things, Little Britain. Partly demolished by Henry VIII, this is one of the last remaining pieces of Middle Ages London. A church was first built here in 1123 and there are some remaining Norman doors, but what’s now left is a mish-mash of destruction and reconstruction. In the centre, though, is a superb, although crowded, medieval space. Needless to say it’s been used in plenty of films including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth.

And so to Spain. My second visit to Almeria has, if anything, outdone the first. I gave a lively and, at times, heated seminar at the university, complete with not one but two translators. The lunch afterwards, though, was the true highlight with Alvaro, his PhD student Miguel and Daniel, the scandalously young Sub-Dean for International Relations with the Faculty of Health Sciences (see pic).

I'll not be able to do justice to my time here so I'll just randomly pluck out a few highlights from the pile. First, the food. Bloody hell the Spanish can eat. Today is Saturday and I'm just back from the beach at Cabo de Gata (Cat Cape apparently, but sounds a bit dodge in English, no?) where a dip in the Mediterranean and a spot of paddle ball was followed by Paella (see piccie) and a tart the size and weight of an average house brick.

Much of my transportation here has been courtesy of the back of Álvaro's motorbike (see video) so there has been some serious character building going on as well as the nosh. Don't get me wrong; Álvaro's a perfectly good driver but the Spanish are a fair bit more devil-may-care about traffic lights, speed bumps and roundabouts, to say the least. All very well except if you are stuck on the back with nothing but a round bit of perspex between you and Almeria's public transport system.

I can also happily report that the beer has been consistently excellent, particularly at my favourite haunt Casa Puga in the city centre (see piccies of main bar, with hams hanging from the ceiling, and my new tapa of choice, consisting of beer, fried egg and ham).

Talking of building character, Álvaro decided we should go on a mountain bike ride one evening. It’s light till about ten here at the moment, so we set off at seven and for the next three hours we battled sand dunes, stray dogs and fading light. I twigged that Álvaro wasn’t totally sure where we were going after one half hour stretch riding over rocks; not stones, pebbles or gravel. Rocks. I will candidly admit that after the first 20 minutes of this, well over an hour into the odyssey, images of a bloke with a white beard, holding a long spear, riding an old horse with his dopy sidekick Sancho bringing up the rear did come to mind. Eventually Álvaro stopped to inform me that this wasn’t part of the plan. Along the way we (that is, I) had lost our only pump and we were miles from being able to turn back, so things were on the edge. The intrepid duo ploughed on and eventually made it home, filthy, just after 10. Of course, this being Spain, we showered and headed out for dinner, tucking into our first cerveza and tapa at Casa Puga around 11. Just another Iberian day.

In the summer, of course, the late night living gets even later. Midnight mid-week sees literally thousands of people with kids and pooches out walking and talking, enjoying the perfect temperature. This week there was a music festival in the square adjacent to the city's cathedral. I went to one of the shows and it wrapped up close to midnight with kiddies and older folk mixing easily. The show included this extraordinary young guy playing a Hebrew drum called the 'hang'. (check him out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I2SjGZOqQg&feature=related). Anyway, being able to be part of a large crowd of people devoid of the yob factor is one the great pros of living in a culture like this.

For most of my time here the university put me up in a little hostel by the beach called Delfin Verde (Green Dolphin). It was small but cheerful and well maintained. It also has its own little restaurant (sorry, food again!) which I looked over from my window. “Gardy! Did you spend much time there?” I hear you ask? Let us just say that by the fifth day the waiters and I were exchanging theories on the meaning of life.

There is much else that I could bore you with concerning cultural difference; the impact of the economic crisis on Spain, beach etiquette, my introduction to the sport of 'padel'. (Did I mention the food?) Anyway, I’ll leave you with an unexpected pleasure. This last video was taken in Madrid airport which, as airports go, is a cracker. Notice the calming silence. You see, as well as being a big, airy space, they don’t do boarding calls or, actually, announcements of any kind. They just expect you to read the screens and get yourself to the plane. Revolutionary, no?

Love yous all

Miguel del Gardo

Vancouviér Calling

Friends,

It has always struck me that the problems with the English speaking bits of Canada could be solved overnight by giving them French sounding names. It is in this spirit that I write to you from the picturesque western city of Vancouviér (as in Cartier), formerly boring old Vancouver, from where, once again, your intrepid Aussie traveller has cheated death. But more of that later.

By the way, all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and all videos can be viewed by doing same.

This edition of Gardy’s Excellent Blog™ is a rip-roaring tale of close scrapes and high adventure. In fact, the close scrapes started early…. very early. Things started smoothly enough with the flight from Sydney to Singapore aboard one of Singapore Airlines new double-decker A380s. I was seated near the back, just in front of the cork-screw staircase at the very rear of the plane. Common sense tells you that the staircase goes to the second deck of seating upstairs, but with a couple of cheeky merlots onboard I did start to wonder whether there wasn’t something more ethereal going on; who was really up there? Marilyn? Elvis? God? Liberace?

I resisted the temptation to find out. After all, the A380 has an in-flight entertainment system that needs to be seen to be believed. There really was no time to waste and with my new noise-cancelling head-phones there was the new Metallica record, plus a host of others, to get through. Heaven, upstairs, could wait.

I spent the night in the Changi airport hotel to save myself a couple of cab fairs. Not cheap but nice sheets on the bed (always important) and a selection of personal grooming products in the loo to bring a smile to the face of even the most discerning traveller.

And yet, it could all have ended there. In the morning I walked out of the hotel back into the airport and proceeded to check emails on one of the many internet terminals dotted around the joint. After a while, I walked down towards my departure gate and, seeing another computer terminal close by, began to dash off a couple of last minute epistles. And then time stood still. I remember the moment perfectly. I stared at the screen in the complete and certain knowledge that I had left my passport and boarding pass sitting on the first terminal I had used some 20 minutes ago.

I know what you’re thinking. However, friends, the panic that accompanies a moment like this cannot be imagined. It cannot simply be conjured up out of thin air or well meaning sympathy. Oh no. You definitely have to experience panic of this kind to understand it. One feels the blood drain out of the face only for, a moment later, adrenalin to take up the spaces where the blood used to be.

I didn’t need to check my bag, I knew it wasn’t there. Suddenly my legs were running. No, sprinting. It was definitely a sprint as I knocked old ladies out of the way, desperate to get back to the screen on which I had begun the morning. Legs pumping, mind racing, I stopped at a point where, if anything, my panic increased. I was lost. I had taken a turn thinking I knew my way back but I didn’t. I was sans passport and, now, lost. I stood there cursing and thinking how long it would take to get a replacement passport. I wasn’t going to Vietnam after all. I was going to be in Singapore for… how long? A week? Two?

I headed for the nearest information desk and started to explain the situation, hardly able to get the words out. Then something else happened. I realised that the time for panic was over. I was now stuck in Singapore and that was that. I began to talk more slowly, resigned to my fate. I remembered that there was an amusement arcade near the computer I had used and the information person was able to direct me back there. When I got there there was no sign of passport. I then walked over to a different information desk. The first person I had spoken to said that she would begin checking with all the other counters so when I got to the second counter the person knew about me (the shame of it all) and, you guessed it, the passport had been handed in!!!!

So, friends, somehow I managed to make that flight to Saigon. It scarcely needs to be pointed out how lucky I was, but somewhere out there is a person who saved this trip before it had really begun.

Saigon. What to say? Well, the most obvious thing is that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam knows a friend when it sees one. The bloke at immigration took one look at me and said “Gardy! We’ve been expecting you. In you go, me old China!” Certain other Western countries, take note.

Having caught a taxi from the airport through the oceans of motor-scooters, I checked in to the very gracious Mai Kim Loan Hotel where, once again, I was greeted like an old friend. It is fair to say that Saigon does have the odd hotel, but potential visitors could do much worse than Mai Kim Loan which is small, cheap, comfortable (see piccie) and close to the centre of town. I asked for and got a room high up with a balcony, giving commanding views of what I take to be a fairly standard Saigon streetscape (pic below).

I spent the next three days trying to take it all in. Luckily, I had some precious insider’s intelligence courtesy of Sasha Stubbs, Saigon resident and part of the Murphy/Abbott clan. Of course, there will be travel purists who say you should simply explore new places with fresh eyes in a state of blissful, childlike ignorance without being told where to go or what to see.

This is all very well, but I was hungry and had a fist full of dong (local currency) to splash around. Yes, eating was high on the list of priorities and, thanks to Sasha and her scooter, I ate in a pretty incredible open-air alleyway restaurant, with long tables and nary a Westerner (save your faithful correspondent and Sasha) to be seen. This particular culinary excursion produced too many highlights to list, suffice to say that I chowed down on the biggest prawns I’ve ever seen (check ‘em out!) and ate everything wrapped in leaves with my hands. Very liberating. Beer very cheap too.








In fact, given my extensive experience (four days), Saigon seemed like a traveller’s paradise; cheap, safe, great food and super-friendly people. Yes, one is harassed to buy things, but ever so gently. Wandering around on my first afternoon I was constantly offered tours of the city by scooter drivers. One particularly persistent purveyor of joy rides was ‘Dae’ who mysteriously appeared in front of me on three consecutive corners. Was there more than one of him? Eventually I decided to pay him for a photograph and asked him to tell me about his life. Oh yes. Regular Margaret Mead, me. My point, though, is that regardless of how you think Westerners should be treated in countries that have been pulverised by Western bombs, I don’t remember feeling this relaxed and safe in a ‘foreign culture’, ever.


There are surprises on every corner, of course, but can I humbly recommend the Vietnam War Museum to future Saigon visitors? As well as apparently being a propaganda and education vehicle – the entire bottom floor is devoted to pictures and exhibits denouncing ‘wars of aggression’ and the atrocities of the invading forces – it deals with the period before the war and the ongoing legacy of it; landmines, birth defects and the process of documenting war crimes. There is even a terrific section devoted to all the Western journalists that were killed in the war. The photographs here are electrifying.

Sasha also directed me to Saigon's premier coffee joint. I got there late on my last night in town. I think it shows.



Ok, at this rate six weeks is going to stretch to War and Peace dimensions, so let me wrap up Vietnam by saying I left feeling nourished on a number levels (just one more food picture!) and now know – for sure – that you can get four people on one scooter…. easy.




I then flew to Bangkok and completed the 11 hour flight to London on one of Thai Air’s circa 1985 747s. It is at times like this you realise just how far airline seats have come and, more to the point, how one has come to rely on in-flight entertainment systems. So, here I was, 11 long hours stretching out in front of me with one measly projector for each cabin section and a video selection consisting of precisely three movies, played consecutively. Call me spoilt, but it was a long bloody flight.

I spent a couple of edifying days in a gloriously summery London, made all the better for meeting the glamorous Joan Philip for lunch and a bit of church spotting. Such a good sport, Joan.

It was then on to Bristol for a conference being held by the University of Western England. The conference organisers put me up in the tip-top Bristol Hotel, by the canal in the city centre. Only spent a few days in Bristol but it looked fun and the local accent gets me all gooey, although this does happen a lot with me. I met a bloke by the canal on my first afternoon there who was getting around on his trusty treadly, so we got talking bikes, naturally. In the course of the conversation he revealed, without a hint of self-consciousness, that Bristol was such a great place that he’d never actually travelled anywhere. Couldn’t really see the point. Oh for such clarity of purpose in life!!

Thanks to colleagues at the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol for a great short stay, in particular Emma Williamson, Emma Haliwell (apparently no relation of Geri), Nicky Rumsey and Helen Malson, who generously entrusted her spare room to the dodgy colonial.

Birmingham next. Once again, the hospitality was exemplary, this time courtesy of my new best friend, Symeon Dagkas and Richard Bailey at University of Birmingham. In exchange for giving one (admittedly damn good) seminar I was wined and dined to within an inch of my life. Symeon is a force of nature and if ever he does come to Australia I will need to take out a small personal loan to keep him entertained in the manner he did for me. Thanks Symeon.

The final English leg of the tour took me back to the thriving metropolis of Loughborough where I stayed with my friend Laura Azzarito, partner Kim and Fonzi the beagle. Staying with friends who own a dog is always a delicate business because, as many of you know, I am the dog whisperer and invariably the pooch wants to come with me when it’s time to leave. I explained to Fonzi as best I could that Ireland has very strict laws against the importation of fugitive beagles (I left out the bit that I didn’t need another immigration infraction against my name). He looked confused and close to tears, but eventually I convinced him that it could never work between he and I. Thank you to Laura and Kim for a great stay and, please, don't hold it against Fonzi. He's only human.

As well as Loughborough’s many geographic and cultural charms, I also had a chance to catch up with friends Louisa Webb, Emma Rich and John Evans. All were in fine form if still somewhat in collective denial about their desire to move to Australia.

So. Next stop Ireland. Leaving London on the morning of my departure I talked myself out of a cab, took the tube, got to Heathrow, stood in the check-in line for 30 minutes, got to the front of the queue, only to be told that the flight had closed two minutes ago. I guess if I had thrown myself on the floor, tore off my clothes and started chewing the ankles of other passengers they may have let me on. I had work to do and there was another flight in a few hours, so I settled for making a few smart ass comments and then bought what passes for a coffee in England and waited it out.

In Dublin I made the spur of the moment decision to take a bus – rather than the train – to Limerick on account of the bus being about to leave. Classic case of where fools rush in. This thing went everywhere. No sooner were we back on the freeway following the signs to Limerick when we’d turn off again for some unpronounceable village in the regularly misguided belief that there might be someone waiting for the bus there. However, one can’t help be charmed by the fact that an Irish bus driver will drop you where ever you want to get off and not, unlike grumpy Australian drivers, only at ‘designated stops’. One of our final stops was in Nenagh where there was meant to be a driver change.... except there was no driver. Well, he arrived eventually by which stage my annoyance I had disappeared under the (strictly anthropological) profound recollection that Ireland does have the prettiest redheads in the world.

By early evening I was delivered into the welcoming arms of my friend Ann ‘Foxy’ MacPhail, whose sumptuous Glaswegian accent I first encountered in Loughborough in 2000.

As some readers will be aware, my purpose in going to Ireland was partly to do a spot of bike riding. I rode from the 1st to the 11th of July, starting in Ennis (County Clare, thanks to Eimear Enright for the lift), heading south to Kilkee and then working my way north. Amongst other things this meant a couple of nights in Lisdoonvarna, traditionally the match-making hub of Ireland and now home to ‘Europe’s biggest singles event’ every September.

Apparently Lisdoonvarna really was the place where farmers used to come once a year to get fixed up with a suitable (or not so suitable) squeeze… er wife. A local told me that during the singles event the town is awash in young folk and Irish style country music and this – not a word of a lie – is considered romantic in a weird Irish kind of way. I heard some of this music. I can confirm that it is Irish and it is kinda country. This is all I’m prepared to say on the matter. I can also reluctantly report that, true to form, I did not find love in Lisdoonvarna. My search for a farmer goes on.

I then travelled by ferry out to Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands where I spent a gorgeous day riding, took my one and only Irish swim (water cold enough to kill a man).....



and checked out what are probably the Islands main attraction, a number of bronze age stone forts. I’ll keep this brief, but I trudged out to one of the forts – Dun Aengus – and walked through the outer wall. Eventually you find yourself in a large semi-circular opening with a stone wall perimeter behind as you stare out on the, now, grass covered space.

At the edge of space was a raised stone plinth and beyond that what I took to be a small drop. As I walked towards the edge of the plinth I noticed that there were people lying at the end with their heads over the edge. I froze in my tracks. There were no signs, no warnings, but right up to the moment when I realised what these people were doing, I had actually been walking towards a 100 metre cliff top, with nothing but a sheer rock face and the ocean below. What if those people hadn't been there? The thought still fills me with dread. I learned later that the site actually loses a couple of people every year, taken by sudden up-drafts to a not so sudden (think about it, you’d have plenty time to consider your mistake from that height!) demise below.

As often happens when travelling in Ireland, at moments like this you realise that the Irish are both behind and in front of us in so many ways. The relative absence of litigation culture means that the place is not polluted by ‘Beware! Danger! This means you stupid!’ signs. This is both refreshing and unsettling and, one imagines, cannot last as Ireland becomes more affluent and less, well, Irish.

I’ll not bore you with bike riders tales of head winds and nasty climbs, and just say that in about 800kms I saw a huge variety of country side, stayed in some superb old B&Bs and reacquainted myself with Irish Guinness, the real thing. My day in ‘The Burren’ (County Galway) was superb. During his much written about time in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell is said to have described this rocky, barren, spectacular region thus: “Not enough wood to hang a man, not enough water to drown him and not enough soil to bury him." I, on the other hand, had more pressing concerns, as the attached video shows.



The trip finished in Westport (County Mayo), home to some gorgeous early 19th century buildings (I stayed in one, my room was right up on the fourth floor loft, decorated pink and purple) and some equally edifying drinking establishments, where the music plays every night of the week.

At a pub called the Porter House I somehow got myself in a shout with a boran player who, I learned, had married two Spanish women (not simultaneously, mind), both of whom he’d had two children with and both of whom now lived in Spain. At one stage this looked like developing into quite an intense, not to say expensive, conversation. I managed to extricate myself but only thanks to a 34 verse folk tune during which time the boran player was suitably distracted and engaged.

I caught the train back to Limerick for a few final terrific days in Ann and Deborah Tannehill's delightful village of Ballyna. Thanks in particular to Deborah for her good company and for having the good sense to suggest I pay for a proper sports massage to straighten out the knots collected from 10 days in the saddle. I ain’t kinky, but a proper deep tissue massage on a body with lots of tired muscles is proof positive that pleasure and pyrotechnical pain are separated by a very, very thin line. I laughed, I cried, it was better than cats, as my friend Will would say. Thanks also to Mary O'Sullivan for dinner at her spectacular new home.

I also caught up with my guide in all things Irish, Eimear Enright. Thanks again, Eimear, for the lifts, the lunches and the heart stopping walks across University of Limerick’s ‘Bridge of Death’.

All too soon it was time to leave, and this meant a seven hour flight to Toronto and then five more hours to Vancouver…. er, sorry, Vancouviér. I only spent a day here before jumping on the ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island, where I had a couple of nights, and then another ferry to Galiano Island in the gulf between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. I had done months of extensive, in depth research and then chose Galiano Island because of my affection for Galiano and ice. Galiano is gorgeous and I stayed in a superb cabin on the north end of the island.


No edition of GEB is complete without a near death experience. On my second last night on the island I was overtaken by a burning fever, uncontrollable shivering and general lethargy. I got through the night but was no better the next day. Getting medical assistance was not a straightforward matter, the island's medical clinic being closed that day for 'software upgrades'. I jest not. Anyway, I finally contacted a doctor who said he couldn't rule out malaria. Hmmm. I thought it over and within a couple of hours I was on the ferry back to the mainland, caught a taxi to the hospital at the University of British Columbia, and then spent the next fours in emergency. Long story short, blood tests were negative for malaria and by the next day the fever had lifted, only to be replaced by rather traumatic events south of the border, so to speak.

Luckily, all this was not enough to prevent me from attending a great little two day workshop held by University of British Columbia's Department of Anthropology. I can't thank Amy Salmon, Darlene MacNaughton and especially Kirsten Bell enough for organising such a great event and for going to so much trouble to get people from all over the place there. A dead set highlight, it was.

Even in the dying moments of the tour there were still moments of drama. My late night flight from Vancouver to Sydney was held over till the morning and there was no Metallica anywhere to be found on the in-flight entertainment system once we actually got in the air. Travel, it's hell.

And so endeth another edition of the multi-award winning Gardy’s Excellent Blog™. Bet you didn't know they give out awards for blogs. Come on team! Get with it! GEB has, in fact, won the 'Most Gratuitous Use of Dull Photographs' category three of the last four years. Not bad for an old jock, huh?

Love yous all

MG

Leicestershire Calling

I give you permission to breathe! Look, I can only work so fast in getting these multi-media epistles together so you’re just going to have to stop holding your breath between updates. Ok? It’s not healthy!!

Right. Comfortable? My latest missive is, if anything, a little gentler paced than usual, perhaps since I have been flat-chat giving the nation’s tax payers full value for money doing…. erm, what is it I do again? Yes, of course. “Research”. I should also warn that readers with a sharp disinterest in a) sport and b) architecture may need to turn off now.

You will recall that I signed off last time just before flying to the People’s Socialist Republic of Canadia. Well, we managed to dodge hostile US fire and landed safely in T’rono where William J. Letts IV (known to American debt collection agencies as “Mr Iv”) was waiting, sartorially elegant and smelling of expensive cologne. In no time we were on the westward freeways to good old Burlo’. For the uninitiated this trip is akin to diving into vast swarm of small rodents and then hoping to be carried along on the tide. Traffic in this part of the world is not so much divided into lanes as torrents. Damn good to be back amongst it.

Apart from enjoying Will’s gracious hospitality and smart new digs, I spent the week at Toronto’s Ice Hockey Hall of Fame where I was knee deep in match day programs, musty old newspapers and vintage footage of ice hockey players… er… hockeying, I believe they call it. Long time readers of GEB will recall that one is struck by the elaborateness of the ice hockey, um, costume. Turns out it hasn’t always been that way. In the old days, when men were men, much of the protective paraphernalia the modern player goes in for was considered surplice to requirements. In fact, if any of you have seen a relatively recent game of ice hockey you will know that the goal keeper looks more like a medium sized suburb than a person about to engage in any kind of sporting endeavour. Not so in the 1930s and 1940s when the bloke standing in front of the up-turned bouncinette they call a “goal” came out protected by little more than a toothpick and a colourful pair of happy-pants! No eye protection for these boys, oh no. Countless smashed jaws and missing eyes later and there is still debate about the pros and cons of protective gear for goalies as late as the 1960s! Talk about dieing for an ideal! Of course, these days your average goalie resembles an actual size version of one of those battery-powered cyborg monsters the kiddies like so much. Either that or he’s about to go out trick-or-treating.

Even less than sports-minded readers will be amazed to hear, as I was, that the National Hockey League actually employs a group of blokes to be official … wait for it… “Keepers of the Cup”, the cup being the Stanley Cup, the rather over-sized trophy they award to the year’s best team of hockeyers. What does a “Keeper of the Cup” do you ask? Well, after the final hooter of the final game in their best of 7, 639 game finals series, a couple of Keepers get to walk out across the ice on a red carpet carrying the cup in their white gloved hands before handing it to the suit who will then present the thing to the victorious captain hockeyer. And yet, there is so much more. Tradition has it that each hockeyer from the winning team gets to keep the trophy for 24 hours and, you guessed it, one Keeper has to stay with the cup at all times! Never let it out of their sight! Just imagine if someone had the foresight and courage to introduce this to the rugby league. Why, an NRL “Keeper”, say me, could have the pleasure and privilege of standing by while Mat “the Oxe” Orford or Steve “Beaver” Menzies took the Winfield Cup for a celebratory bubble-bath. And given that they have but 24 short hours to savour the trophy, perhaps for the one and only time in their life, what if the player (quite understandably) wanted to take it to bed with them? Well there’d be nothing for it; a Keeper is a Keeper and you’d have to snuggle up as best you could, right? Don’t tell me these ideas don’t have legs!

All too soon my time at the Hockey HOF came to and end. Very special thanks to Miragh Addis and Craig Campbell (a one time Keeper no less!) for their friendly welcome and wonderful help. Both went way beyond the call of duty and really helped me to get the most from my visit. Thanks and a wonderful Christmas/winter to you both.

With an exhausting, oh, four days, nose to the grindstone, behind me, some decent R&R was called for. So I jumped at the offer to spend the weekend with a reasonable percentage of Will’s family in Boston where Will’s bother and sister-in-law live. The weekend saw the celebration of youngest daughter Sophia’s (sister of Olivia) third birthday. It was a great weekend, topped off with Sunday’s party consisting of a swarm of 3 to 5s, a Jumping Castle (see piccy of Uncle Will keeping an eye on things), and a body artist. As you can see, I got into the spirit of things and got myself an appropriately manly decoration. Um, Laurie, the body artist assured me it will come off eventually. I believe her. Really I do.

From there it was on to Springfield Massachusetts, home of the National Basketball Association Hall of Fame. The curator, Matt Zeysing, generously took time to speak to me about the world of basketball and to help clarify the different social and historical characters of the four major North American sports. Springfield itself is a difficult city to describe. As a scared little white guy I found it a touch unsettling. Not much about the place says “why don’t you come out strolling after dark with the one you love”, you know what I mean? In fact, the first night there I was in a coffee joint and asked the girl behind the counter if she could suggest anywhere for dinner. It was dark outside and, although she said there was a place close by, my heart sank when she spoke the word that turns the blood of all travelers cold. Yes, friends. The “U” word ….. Underpass. Yep. I had to walk under a freeway underpass to get there. I set off in my most assertive stride, had dinner and bravely caught a taxi home. I’d proved my point.

From there I hired a car and drove to Cooperstown, New York. Cooperstown is actually a code word for baseball. Major League Baseball has its Hall of Fame there and as the bloke who filled my car one night said, if you’re not into baseball, Cooperstown doesn’t have a whole lot else to offer. It’s a picturesque place and sits at one end of an oval shaped lake. The houses are big and expensive looking and the place has a theme-park feel to it. It is also home to Doubleday Field, thought by some to be the birthplace of baseball and used in a few of those dodgy Hollywood baseball flicks on account of its distinctly old-world feel. Until recently, this intimate little field was the venue of the annual “Hall of Fame Game” held over the weekend when each year’s new inductees are honoured. However, in the last couple of years the top players have decided they can’t risk being injured in a game that’s not worth anything to them. So, it doesn’t happen anymore. The Hall of Fame itself is pretty extraordinary with the central Hall looking more like a war memorial than anything else. It runs pretty deep for some people, baseball.

My time in Cooperstown was hugely aided by Freddy Brenowski and Benji Harry in the resource centre at the Hall of Fame. When I arrived Benji had a pile of videos ready for me to watch and even invited me home to have dinner with his lovely family (see pic). Thanks to Benji and Jennifer for some welcome human contact and a home cooked meal.

The next little while is a bit of a blur. I had to drive back to Springfield, then catch an overnight bus from Springfield to Toronto, except the trip involved leaving Springfield at about 6.30pm, changing buses in Albany about 9pm, then again in Syracuse at 1am and then again in Buffalo at 4am!! With my journey not quite complete at 6.30am, I then had to jump on a peak hour train back to Burlington where William J. was again my saviour.

I spent the next week hanging around Burlington and caught up with Brenda Brown, an ex-CSU Burlington student who lives in Hamilton. Before heading to the US Brenda had had me over to dinner with her wonderful family, consisting of husband, children and animals of every description, including Leo the über-cat. Quite a specimen is Leo, don't you think?.

From Toronto I flew to London where I watched more old sports footage in various locations and indulged my love affair with old things. As anyone who has heard me talk about English churches will know, there is always the danger that once I start I may never stop. So let me just say that, amongst others, I visited Christ Church Spitalfields, perhaps the best known work of Nicholas Hawksmoor, the late 17th and early 18th century architect. Hawksmoor lived in the shadow of his more famous master, Christopher Wren, but his churches have a mystery and daring that Wren’s perhaps lack. Spitalfields has been variously described as one of Europe’s most beautiful and most ugly. I’ll let you judge. It is also at the heart of Peter Ackroyd’s novel Hawksmoor which speculates that our man derived his architectural inspiration from various Devil-worshipping and death-cult beliefs. Spitalfields has also been recently restored using Hawksmoor’s original plans.























This instalment’s video also comes from outside a reasonably significant London church. Enjoy!



From London I headed north to Edinburgh where I had some talks to give. These went well and the city of Edinburgh was its usual delightful, freezing self. Those familiar with the Scottish capitol will know that an extinct volcano overlooks the city and you can walk up the thing. From the bottom it looked challenging but kinda friendly. Well I took the steep route only to find that half way up the road gets much more narrow, more slippery and the wind stronger because of the exposure. There also isn’t much in the way of fences and, in fact, for a lot of the way there is no fence at all between you and a very, very long drop. Friends will know that heights aren’t exactly my thing and so I spent the last section at something nearing a jog, leaning ridiculously to one side and hugging the left hand side of the track. Oh yes, and eyes glued to the ground.

Far too many people to mention were nice to me in Edinburgh but they included Christine Knight and Steve Sturdy from the Edinburgh Uni's Genomics Policy and Research Forum where I gave a paper on genetics, would you believe. The people from the forum took me to some gorgeous little pubs and eateries and reminded me of the value of having locals to show you what a city really has to offer. Perhaps even better than any of this, walking around town I stumbled on a joint selling Scotland's most famous dish and one of this litle black duck's all time faves.

Next stop, back to England and on to Loughborough from where I write and where I have friends from the university phys-ed fraternity. The English weather is doing its thing but I have been amply sustained by colleagues John Evans, Laura Azzarito, Emma Rich and Louisa Webb.

One day, I’d love to live in England and stop here a good while. I’ve often bored friends with my sense that many Australians find it very difficult to understand why anyone would live here, particularly if they came from Australia. For two countries that share so much, England is a very different kind of place from Australia. The sense of space and, well, time are both distinctively altered here, I think. When I travel in England I look for different kinds of things and appreciate other pleasures. This isn’t making much sense and I will soon be back in Australia, but I will always feel like I have left part of myself behind here. Always.

Love yous all

MG