Happy World Friendship Day and this post is dedicated to the friends we make around the world on our travels.
And whom we’re all missing so much.
Winnie the Pooh is the patron of World Friendship Day.
And who better than the silly willy-nilly old bear all stuffed with fluff.
I’m forever indebted to Mississippian Zach who looked after me (and the rest of the group but mostly me).
On the second leg of my American Odyssey in the Deep South.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King and honouring the two other Kings, Elvis and BB King.
Hit the road Zach
If it had been left to me it would have been more Tragical than Magical Mystery Tour.
With me leaving my mobile phone back in Cleveland, 124 miles from state capital Jackson.
Zach keeping an eye on me
Where we were assembling for the opening of the Two Mississippi Museums, the Museum of Mississippi and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
Zach only organised for a friend who he said was travelling up to the opening himself, but who may very well have been enlisted to help this dopey Scotsman, to take the mobile with him.
The story doesn’t end there though.
And when I put my phone down in the huge hall in the convention centre in Denver Zach appeared to warn me:
’We’re not getting someone to travel 100 miles if you forget your mobile phone this time!’
Geraldine, my Soca friend
We binge-watched American sitcoms when the children were younger (whaddya mean? we still do).
And that meant following the misfortunes of old divil Arthur who had to be walked by his daughter Carrie’s friend Holly.
I’m obviously too young for any of that only I’m not.
And Geraldine walked me and my new Virginian friend Patsy when I went in search of Rihanna at Club Barbados in Barbados
As well as being a reason for getting up early Geraldine went the extra mile for me.
When I showed an interest in Soca music by singing King Bubba tunes.
And on the last day of my trip a CD of her favourite Soca music was waiting for me at reception.
Ich bin ein Dresdener
If only I’d had Ingrid as my teacher when I was young.
Ingrid took us on a walk through Dresden and Saxon history at the German Travel Mart.
Her grandmother had talked to her about the Red Heaven firestorm that set alight their city at the end of the Second World War.
And told us of life under Communist rule. So good I went back for the same tour after my booze cruise on the River Elbe.
I wear the wrist band pass for the tour to this day.
And also others from my Travels which includes Denver, Los Angeles, the Czech Republic and Portugal.
The Redhead in Bed, 25 Degrees, Huntington Beach, California:
Ingredients: Ketel One Citroen vodka, strawberries, lemon juice, sparkling wine.
I’ve yet to have a Redhead in Bed anywhere (honestly) but if I did it would be in Huntington Beach.
How to: Mix One Citroen vodka, strawberries, lemon juice, and sparkling wine for an added kick.
For those who like to drink their dessert, 25 Degrees offers four spiked shakes, mixing vanilla ice cream and your choice of Guinness, Maker’s Mark, Kraken Black Spiced Rum, or Kahlua among other sweet milkshake additions.
Ingredients: Mint, shochu, sugar, lime, fizzy water
If you had been planning to get out to Japan this year for the Olympics then you have our sympathies but here’s a multi-discipline event you can do from the safety of your own home.
This is a Japanese twist on a classic mojito which swaps the rum usually found in a Mojito with shochu, a Japanese liquor typically made from buckwheat, sweet potatoes or barley.
This is an easy cocktail to whip up once your guests arrive (two minutes prep time) and is a guaranteed crowd pleaser.
How to: Add the lime, mint and sugar to a tall glass and bruise with a muddler. To this, add the shochu and fizzy water and stir. Serve over ice with mint to garnish. www.japan.travel/en/uk/
You know when you think you’ve seen someone famous, like Lewis Hamilton or me. you convince yourself it’s just someone who looks like them.
And so I had a job in persuading my fellow revellers at Grand Kadooment, the closing parade of the Barbados Carnival, that it was actually Lewis on the float.
No, I haven’t persuaded The Scary One to leave the delights of North Berwick near Edinburgh, I’m merely flagging up Edinburgh Airport’s http://www.edinburghairport.com reopened destinations.
And the last word is to back Aer Lingus’s www.aerlingus.com stance on the Irish Government’s latest direction of travel on quarantines.
While welcoming the lifting of the restrictions from July 9, they merely want clarity until then.
As one who would gladly queue overnight to get back, I echo their call. And all my airline friends who we appreciate even more, if that’s possible, now we’ve been seeing them less Flyday Friday – Airline angels with wings
“I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live” (Psalm 104:33).
Psalm 104:3
But when will we be able to sing again in church?
I have long sung lustily and croakily and in the wrong place and always find that the service is less uplifting when the organist or the choir are off.
But that is what we’ll have to put up with when our churches reopen, initially for private prayer and funerals.
There is a gravitas to the singing as the botafumeiro swings from side to side in St James’s Cathedral during the Pilgrims’ Mass at the end of your Camino Ways walk http://www.caminoways.com.
But the real stirring stuff comes from the black gospel singers on the other side of the Atlantic.
And yes, I know we have them over here but they’re not in the same number.
I’d been chasing the choirs unsuccessfully on my travels and was disappointed to have to miss the Southern choir in Jackson, Mississippi https://www.deep-south-usa.com and The Promised Land because our flights back through Texas clashed with the choir.
All joking aside about Zlatan ‘The Ego’ Ibramovich being cut down to size.
But is it right that the Sweden soccer superstar should befall the same fate as Edward Colston in Bristol, Lord Nelson in Dublin and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad?
A little big woman: Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi
Sometimes it’s the design that catches you and stops you in your tracks.
And so it is with this remarkable little woman,
The President of the USA, Lydon Baines, Johnson took extraordinary measures in stopping her saying her piece at the Democratic Convention by having television change its schedule.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s life was extraordinary, born into a sharecropping family and picking cotton from the age of six, she was later forced out of her home, threatened with her very life and beaten.
All because she wanted to sign on on the voting register.
She summed up her struggle in the Civil Rights Movement thus, and of course nobody could say it better: ‘I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.’
Us journalists like to think of ourselves as hard-bitten but I had to choke back the tears walking through the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam…. http://www.annefrank.org.
The audio narrative dwelt on a passage in her diary where she mentions that she wants to become a journalist when she’s older.
And what a journalist she would have been… ethical (yes, some of us are), prying and fearless.
Amsterdam is one of the world’s great cities and Anne one of history’s greatest figures… http://www.iamsterdam.com.
Statues should be provocative and the Czechs have this one down to a T.
‘Piss’ is the good people of Prague’s commentary on the politicians who have urinated all over their country.
You’ll not see it here but once the water gets flowing they pee all over the map of the country.
The Czechs as well as being the world’s biggest lager drinkers, per population, with some of the world’s best beers, are wonderfully anti-establishmentarian.
There are statues to musical giants all over the world but while former Thin Lizzy lead singer Phil Lynott isn’t the best or most famous singer of them all, try telling that to Dubliners.
It is a tradition now for visitors to Dublin to have their photo taken outside Philo’s statue off the main Grafton Street shopping thoroughfare.
That other statue, the Tart with the Cart, Molly Malone? Well you can leave that to the uninitiated.
Martin Luther stood as a defiant symbol of Dresdeners refusal to see their city disappear after the Allies’ firebombing at the end of the Second World War.
Dresden was known as the Florence of the Elbe and it is one of the great architectural stories of our age, or any age, to see how the Dresdeners have rebuilt their city to the same grandeur of its renaissance days.
Yes, the Little Mermaid is more visited, but personally I prefer the top-hatted Hans in the heart of Copenhagen.
Hans was an eccentric all right and once decamped on Charles Dickens, walked around the house in the starkers, and made it difficult for Charlie to show him the door.
Nelson Mandela Voting Line, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
March to Freedom: In Port Elizabeth
Statues shouldn’t just stand there. No, really. And this is a moving symbolic Voting Line which sums up South African democracy.
This is our host Sisseko and beside him a kid as he would have been back in 1995 when South Africa had its historic vote.
It is also immersive and you don’t have to climb up a plinth to get next to it as they do in Glasgow when they put police cones on the Duke of Wellington.
It is the way I should imagine that Nelson, a native of the Eastern Cape, would have wanted it.
The Gods on Mt Olympus have calmed the unclean air where all our spray has been collecting.
And Athene has seen to it that her showpiece Acropolis and the other outdoor archaeological sites have been reopened.
Standing on the very stones where Socrates and his toga-clad pals scratched their beards and worked out the world was worth the circuitous route to get there… https://athensattica.com and My Greek odyssey.
At the Parthenon
With the UK exploring an air bridge to Greece on account of its low R rate we will all reconnect with the great civilisations of Hellas soon.
Check out your government’s health and travel guidelines.
