And whatever you’re having yourself… January is after all what we make it.
Jimuary in Scotland
Jim O’ Shanter
And for me and all of us of a Scottish disposition then January is Robert Burns’ Month.
Burns is Scotland’s National Poet and January 25 is his birthday… he would be 252 this year.
Wherever they are in the world Scots put on kilts and start eulogising little mice and the like… ‘wee sleekit timrous beastie, oh what a panic’s in thy breastie.’
It’s all the whisky we drink you see!
Alloway Bridge
Burns’ Village is a magical place with Burns’ Cottage, Alloway Kirk and Brig o’ Doon.
Where you can let your imagination run wild.
Three Scots mice
January is also the month when Dr Martin Luther King’s birthday is commemorated.. he was born on January 15 but Martin Luther King Day is actually January 18..
I was fortunate enough to attend the 50th commemoration of his assassination and followed the MLK Trail from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi.
Ginuary in Ireland
G&T O’Clock
And you could do worse than Co. Monaghan, the border county where a ginoisseur will guide you through each gin and tonic.
The Scary One turned her nose up at the juniper when presented with a tray of samples only to then dig in and minesweep them all.
Veganuary
And if it’s good enough for Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Barry White (and he had a healthy appetite, and for food).
Veganuary has really taken off in recent years and I’ve visited the oul’ plant-based food before on this site.
But seeing that the calendar has come around again and that you’ll be performing a public service by not visiting the shops.
Here’s to all those things in your flower beds which also includes the majestic tulip.
And Japanuary
Thanks here to our friends in The Land of the Rising Sun for always keeping it fun and funky.
So Japanuary?
Well, we’re all being encouraged to get on our bikes and in Japan you can do worse than following the Tanesashi Coastline and bike hire is just £10 per day.
They advise stopping off at fish restaurants and temples while ensuring that through the cycling your body remains a temple.
If that’s too sedentary for you then why not canyon through the Sarugajo Gorge.
Talking of temples you shouldn’t go to Japan and not visit a Zen Buddhist temple.
Oh, and in the year when the Olympics are coming to Tokyo then they’re challenging us all to get our adrenaline vibe on.
The Blood Service give you a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive but maybe they’ll now follow Brewdog’s lead of giving beer after a Covid vaccine shot.
The Aberdeenshire beer chain have come up with an inventive and public-spirited way of getting us all to get our shots.
I’ll take all four
They plan to throw open their closed bars as vaccination centres.
And they have asked the public for help in naming the new vaccine-themed beer.
Only here for the beer
As a steer they have mocked up a Vaccine Canteen, Little Prick, Community Immunity and Jab Lab.
All good, but why in the 13 years I was away from Scotland did we start saying jab instead of jag?
Breweries are a staple on tour itineraries and it is always welcome to sample a region’s or a brand’s beer.
I’ve sent many a Wish You Were Beer message from my travels around the world.
Interior decorations
And listened through the spiel from the Master Brewer about the mashing process and the like.
And prayed silently that nobody would ask a question which would require an answer that would eat into the drinking time.
The same goes for any vaccinations.
I mean, do you really want to be left waiting for your complimentary beer because somebody is firing off questions.
Most of us still place it as Milan-Bergamo after its airport (actually it’s Il Caravaggio Orio al Serio International Airport), and this year we saw it as the Covid-19 gateway to Europe.
The pandemic hit Lombardy hard and early; the world watching in horror as its grip fastened last February and March – a preview of things to come.
Stay strong
It was a surreal light to shine on Bergamo, a medieval city in the Alpine foothills.
Suddenly portrayed not as a bustling cultural and historical hub, but through rolling television coverage.
Of empty cobbled streets, eerie churches and boarded shutters.
Medieval Bergamo
A sweeping landscape
Bergamo boasts rich galleries with works by Titian, Botticelli and Canaletto.
We know its Champions League football team, Atalanta.
It celebrates composer Gaetano Donizetti in its annual international opera festival.
And it has architectural dedications to revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The cobbled stones of the old city
Bergamo is known as the Citta dei Mille after 1,000 of its citizens marched on Rome and helped unify Italy in the 19th century.
This year, tourists vanished and a different type of visitor descended.
International news teams flocking to the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, named for another famous son.
Snapshot of Bergamo in the pandemic
But there is light at the end of the tunnel, as many of those who travelled to report on distress, only to find success, have discovered.
As Christophe Sanchez, CEO of Visit Bergamo, said: “Because of the situation we have been through, Bergamo is now the safest town in Europe.”
Visitors it is true, have not always been kind to Bergamo.
But Bergamo is kind to its visitors, particularly those who stay a while.
Owed to Autumn
The Autumn poplar trees
Visiting this autumn, I found the streets, which were desolate in March when everyone was locked away behind their shutters, alive again six months later.
Citizens mingled, talking at breakneck speed behind their masks and, of course, con le mani (with their hands).
Ice cream heaven
They spoke, of course, of the second wave that has now come to pass, and the closure of restaurants, cafes, shops and museums. But also calcio e cibo… football and food.
And whatever it is that a gathering of young Bergamaschi always chat about in loud decibels outside your hotel bedroom window at midnight.
My visit gave me a glimpse into the everyday life of the Bergamaschi – not as victims, although there have been far too many of them, but survivors.
A picture of our times
The testing centre
An exhibition of photographs in the piazza captured the past year.
A masked priest administered Mass; doctors and nurses cared for the sick and dying, and a father cradled his new-born son.
But the Bergamaschi, queuing at the open-air testing centre, knew that the worst had passed and what they were now having to endure is temporary.
They had been here before and prevailed – with a little help from God.
Bergamo is split into old and new towns, Citta Alta (high town) and Citta Bassa (low town).
The best way to reach the walled and cobbled Citta Alta is by funicular.
It takes you into the centre of things, Piazza Mercato delle Scarpe (market of the shoes), and to that staple of any old Italian town, an Irish pub, Tucans.
Take me to Church
Stories for the Masses
For the real beating heart of Bergamo, though, I went to Piazza del Duomo – which houses Bergamo Cathedral and the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore.
Here, the Bergamaschi congregation of old could follow redemptive tales of the parting of the Red Sea, David and Goliath and Noah and the Deluge on wooden engravings.
Forza Atalanta
Deliverance was as much a part of Medieval life as it had been in Biblical times.
And when Our Lady finally spared the Bergamaschi any more suffering from the Plague in the 12th century they built this basilica to her.
Of course, all of this speaks to us in 2020 louder than ever.
Good neighbours
They’ll make a statue of me
Matteo, my Visit Bergamo guide, recalled the only sounds back in March when the city was in quarantine – the sirens of ambulances and the whirring of helicopters.
He told me of a citizen stuck in his house with his Covid-hit ageing father, unable to get help.
When he saw a report of a man who had died in the nearby town of Brescia, leaving behind a half-tank of unused oxygen.
He made his way to Brescia, found the house, asked and was given the tank, although, alas, he could not save his father.
Everything in the garden is getting rosier again
Every Bergamasque has a story of loss and suffering but for Matteo, the best response is a return to the life they know and love.
For Italians that means their famous five-course meals.
Food for thought
And there are lots more courses to come
The centrepiece of which at the Trattoria Sant’Ambroeus in Citta Alta is their special ravioli, casoncelli dei sant ambroeus.
Stuffed pasta with sausage, breadcrumbs, parsley, eggs and garlic and cheese…
All washed down with the best Valcalepio rosso Riserva doc Tenuta Castello di Grumello del Monte.
I sauntered to the city walls and La Marianna for their signature milky scoop of ice cream heaven, stracciatella.
Plenty polenta
And, of course, for Lombardy that was only lunch. Dinner in the roof garden of the plush Excelsior San Marco Hotel in Citta Bassa brought five more courses.
In future, those bustling crowds will return.
But that night, the restaurant was an encouraging two-thirds occupancy with social distancing in place.
And even a puppy at the next table enjoyed himself and heeded the rules.
Bergamo currently sits in the yellow zone, the lowest of the three tiers Italy has been applying since early November.
This means restaurants and bars open till 6pm, shops are open, ski resorts / pools / gym / museums closed, people can move freely. The other zones are red (strictest) and orange (medium).
Travel into Bergamo
involves providing the results of a negative Covid test taken within 72 hours of arrival.
Or you can get an airport test on arrival and quarantine for 48 hours while waiting for the results.
Any travellers will currently need to self-isolate on return..
We Scots like to claim New Year’s Eve as our own but, in truth, it’s freezing and can be samey too which is why I’ll be seeing out 2020 with a Nashville New Year
Better Tennessee than Tillicoutry I say which sounds like a Country song, which I’ll give to my old pal Keith Urban.
Nashville’s finest came to town pre-Covid, Dublin town and treated us all like Country royalty as part of Country To Country.
Country roads: In Dublin
And Keith, who headlined the Nashville New Year big bash, was front and centre of ours, putting a Grafton Street busker on stage.
And giving a random fan one of his guitars.
Nashville meets Dublin
The good old boys in Nashville are not letting this pesky bug stop the music in Music City, or us hearing it.
Jack Daniel’s Music City Midnight New Year’s Eve in Nashville from 4.30pm-5pm on WTVF-NewsChannel 5.
Country boy Jimmy
And see what I’m doing there getting a second shot at the Bells because they’re earlier.
Local favourites Moon Taxi, described as ‘a little indy, a little proggy, a little poppy, will play for 40 minutes just before midnight.
Jazz, soul and R&B combo The Shindelles will play a 20-minute set earlier.
Music to the ears and so will the green light, when it comes, to get back out to Nashville, Music City.
A better Canaries New Year
Saltire In Tenerife
And we’re not letting the latest UK block on the Canaries (they’re back off the exempt list)) spoil our hopes that we will be able to get out there again soon.
And as usual our friends at TUI are ahead of the curve.
With seven nights from December 28 at the 3* Rocamar Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria, self-catering from €579pps (Covid cover included).
While Dublin to Lanzarote from December 31 at the 3* Cincos Plazas, Puerto del Carmen, self-catering from €409pps (Covid Car included.)
We may never know why Vincent Van Gogh lost his ear, though here is a fine crime fiction on the subject, but who is to say it wasn’t after a row about Monopoly?
With the release of their own Vincent board game for Christmas.
Becoming one of hundreds of Monopolys around the world.
With at the latest count, the game being licensed in 103 countries and printed in more than 37 languages.
The Van Gogh version substitutes the Great Man’s art for the traditional streets.
Just painting
While among the pieces naturally is a paint tube though perhaps tastefully no ear.
Monopoly for most of us is as much part of Christmas as Santa, who often brought it fir our stockings, and Christmas turkey.
But it was also brought out when friends came over, or relatives, from home or abroad.
And this was when it got really exciting to see the names of their streets and public transport.
O’Monopoly
So when my Irish relatives got their Dublin board out it had such names as O’Connell Street, Shrewsbury Street in Ballsbridge where I got to stay, and the Busaras on it.
It was very much a point of honour that your country had its own Monopoly.
It was a sign that you were not under the English yolk.
Most spectacular of all was the New York edition where you could say you owned Broadway.
All us poor Scots had to dream of was buying Mayfair, Park Lane or Old Kent Road.
Until the manufacturers stumbled on the rather obvious idea of giving us all what we wanted.
McNopoly
And so we got Edinburgh, and the Royal Mile, Princes Street, the two football stadiums, Easter Road and Tynecastle Park and the rugby ground, Murrayfield.
Now, of course there are now football clubs, film and TV franchises Monopoly merchandise.
D’Ohpoly
In fact you name it and Monopoly have probably adapted it to your needs.
Of course Monopoly, while having a deeply suspicious Property speculation message in its origins back in 1935, has really become a vehicle for imagination.
And discovering about foreign destinations…
By plane, ship, car… or my personal favourite, a wee Scottie dog.