compass journey page

in spite of my impatience

2008-10-21T16:30:00.002Z

:: It's been a long time and I must move on, no time to stop, so this is in note form ::

-I've never read Nabokov before, but often thought I should.
-This book reminds me of Cees Nooteboom
-The narrator appears self assured.
-Too self assured for my liking.
-He made me anxious
-He speaks directly to me (the reader), maybe this is my problem?
-He speaks in tongues, at times.
-And then I seem to get to know him better
-I read the prose like a letter from an old friend.
-And I quite like his style.
-Nabokov compares a pen nib to a beak of a bird of prey, and for that alone, the book is a winner.
-I don't feel I have really 'seen' Russia.

the navigator

faces of the people we don't know

2008-07-17T15:19:00.002Z

I'm going North for the summer, leaving this part of the continent for while.
I'm swapping hot for cold and map reading for naval gazing. And my tour guide for my Russian trip is the unlikely sounding Hermann Hermann. It should be interesting.

the navigator

you can stare all day at the sky

2008-01-12T15:31:00.000Z

No-one clipped my wings, but it seems I forgot how to fly for a while. But now I’m taking to the sky, setting my bearings due north-west. I’m drawing a line that cuts a continent in two.

I’m on my way to Singapore. A name that reads like a sentence - a ditty dedicated to the little holes in your skin. In truth its name means ‘lion city’ - although lions have never lived there.

I know an old man who lives in Singapore but he is not the host who will great me when I land. Instead a band of shadowy ladies are waiting with open arms. They promise ‘ghosts, vampires and other phantoms’ - I think I’m going to enjoy my stay.

the circumnavigator

indistinct figures

2007-11-01T12:06:00.000Z

Karim and Raheen are blissfully naive. Karim is obsessed with maps and wants to be a mapmaker when he grows up. He studies atlases and sees no reason why he cannot walk along the seabed from Pakistan to England. To him, it is obvious, he can trace the route with his finger.

Raheen's naivety is just as simplistic but sadder, still. She recalls a conversation with a friend. After watching a video showing what Raheen referred to as
"thousands and thousands of lights strung beneath a velvet-black starry sky"
She tells the friend it is a beautiful sight, on;y to be told that the lights are the lights of refugee camps.

Despite their childlike oblivion, they are bright and intuitive. Raheen and Karim speak in anagrams, their way of keeping others out. As a reader I find myself becoming familiar with their 'language' and soon I know what they mean by 'vole' (love) and 'oh me' (home).

Despite the descriptions of Karachi and the surrounding sunstruck farmland, I don't feel that I have got to know Pakistan. I don't seem any more knowledgeable about the place. But, Kamilla Shamsie created such deep characters in Raheen and Karim that I haven't had time to stop and take in the sights. I shall miss their insights and a small part of me is sad that I cannot be part of their tight and closed friendship.

the navigator

too near the surface

2007-11-01T11:36:00.000Z

Kartography is a novel about violence and politics, corruption and inequality. But most of all it is about love. Raheen loves Zia. Zia loves himself and nobody really understands Karim enough to know what or who he loves. Set against a backdrop of a terrible hot summer, the teenage characters try to understand the mistakes of their parents and the confusion of their government.

In the beginning of the book, Karim and Rahhen - best friends since birth, are thirteen. It is the late 1980's but references are made to 1971 when as Raheen's father puts it "the music changed". 1971 is an important date for the characters of Kartography. It is the year when their parents met and crucially when the civil war between East and West Pakistan took place. A subject which is gently alluded to throughout the book.

the navigator

turn the sign to the street

2007-07-28T17:16:00.000Z

Leaving dusty melodies and this particular soil beneath my feet. It's a change of continents once again. This time I am headed for Pakistan. Karachi is my destination and Kamila Shamsie is my guide. The book is Kartography, perhaps this will be of some help - an apt title maybe?

the navigator

words melt into arrangements of blue and black

2007-05-28T12:10:00.000Z

Touch is my least developed sense, my least favoured style of experience. Surprising then that my visit to

New Zealand

was so enjoyable. As this is a tactile world - leaving traces on people as people leave traces on the land.

Motifs of flora and fauna are the pins on which the story is wound. Pillowcases are embroidered with flowers so that

‘Etta sleeps with her cheek on the stitching, and when she wakes there is an impression of flowers on her skin.’

But marks are erased just as surely as they are laid. Significant parts of the novel feature extracts from Clifford’s diary, inherited and read by his son Gene as his own death looms.

‘Gene thinks of it now, decomposing in the mud, slowly covered over by thirty years of refuse. He doubts that any part of it remains; paper and cloth, he imagines, would be broken down fairly rapidly, like the soft flesh of creatures without bones.’

Moments of gentleness,

‘Thorsten tells her she has mermaid hair. He held it over her face once, and kissed her through it, and she felt like she was drowning.’

fall between recollections of exquisite destruction,

‘Mrs Hoffman is back in Dresden. Buildings are cracking like bone china. She must run to avoid the falling shards. A library smashes to the ground; pages flutter around her, shuffling themselves to form stories nobody would ever believe. She looks again, and people are cracking. Life-size, bone-china people. A man on a bicycle shatters. A girl with a dog smashes to dust. A woman in a floral dress explodes, showering Mrs Hoffman with sharp flowers.’

A character tries to write a survival guide, to help people lost in the wild. I felt like I needed a guide, to help me filter through all that New Zealand offered me, to enable me to organise my experiences and catagorise my questions in hope of matching them to answers. But that was not Chidgey’s intention, instead she immersed me into the family and their country and I am left a little awed, a little speechless - much like one of her characters.

‘The woman is waiting for an answer, but Christina’s mouth is empty. Leaves are falling onto the tables and she hears every one as it lands like a dry breath. One falls into her lap.’

the circumnavigator

a stitch in time

2007-05-28T11:27:00.001Z

My visit to New Zealand (care of In A Fishbone Church by Catherine Chidgey) left me with a backpack full of questions, a pocket full of ponderings.

- Can you enjoy a view so much that you forget where you are or what you are looking at?
- Can you fall in love so deeply that you forget who you are?
- Do we travel more than we think we do? Do we move less than we appear to?
- Can we swim through memories of the past as if through still waters?
- Can we be too busy living to see what surrounds us? Too busy dusting off fossils to give thought to our future?

Once I get my snapshots developed and my thoughts in order I shall return with a clearer impression of my visit.

the circumnavigator

its only water and sand

2007-05-07T11:45:00.000Z

I’m off. To

New Zealand

. Place names that begin with the word ‘new’ always make me a little sad - sad that I missed the chance to see the old. Perhaps I would have preferred that?

I hope that reading this book will help to clarify the fuzzy indistinctions between New Zealand and Australia. But the back of the book rumours ‘the story of three generations… spanning continents and decades’ - so perhaps I will merely become more confused.

I often fall for books based on their covers, and I like titles that tempt me in. I will tease you a little longer, but believe me when I say this one draws me in, and leaves me to set sail within the skeletal ship of a long dead whale. I’m off.

the circumnavigator

where the end will begin

2007-03-23T16:40:00.000Z

‘Lavender mountains with a snail trail spittle of last winter’s snow’

Nadine Gordimer describes places with a poet’s eye. And read a line at a time, would have satisfied my desire for beautiful writing. But as a novel it felt cluttered and clumsy. The narrative style was complicated and made it nearly impossible to tell who was the storyteller at any one time.

I disliked Rosa Burger and felt unable to engage with her. I couldn’t relate to her. She lives in a way that is foreign to me. There were huge differences between us, not just because of the oceans that separate us, but in the way we live our lives. Perhaps the only thing I recognise is being someone’s daughter. But then, maybe it is not necessary to feel an affinity with every character I read. I will have to ponder this on my further travels.

the navigator

sadness in their voices and their eyes

2007-03-23T15:55:00.000Z

Burger’s Daughter is the story of Rosa Burger. She is the daughter of political activists who were heavily involved and eventually imprisoned for their anti–apartheid beliefs and work. The title of the book is very important – Rosa is defined by her parentage, in particular her father. She will never be an independent person in her own right. She will always be a daughter.

‘There is no formula for dealing with death’

The book deals with death and violence, rape and torture. Rosa is honest and blunt when describing the life she has had and the things she has seen. She appears aloof and has no need for anyone. She does have a boyfriend, Conrad. She finds the relationship difficult knowing that she will never be a normal girl and struggling with the fact that Conrad says he loves her. How can he?

My time in South Africa is short. I don’t want to linger here, there is too much hurt. I feel uneasy with the book, uncomfortable to stay with Rosa for too long. I almost feel as though she is lying to me. Perhaps everything is not as it seems.

‘Sometimes he was not asleep when he appeared to be’

the navigator

sunlight beats down hard here

2007-02-18T13:13:00.000Z

My feet are itching - it must be time to travel once more. This time I will cross no oceans. I will stay on the same continent. My next destination is South Africa. The sun is still hot and I have an appointment with Nadine Gordimer. I will be reading Burger's Daughter.

the navigator

the girls who know everything

2007-01-06T17:11:00.000Z

In Samoa I am not guided so much as welcomed ashore and offered the freedom to roam - in and out of peoples homes, hearts and minds. I am not told a story so much as handed a pack of postcards - snapshots to take and treasure.

For the 236 pages of Where We Once Belonged I become part of the ‘we’ that is Samoa and I learn, through experience, how individuality steps back just as communal identity steps forward.

Sia Figiel uses a language like my own, but twists it wholly to her purpose, spinning familiar words together on exotic and unruly strings to give unforgettable descriptions of people (‘Sale wore a sharkface’.) and places (‘waves cry diesel tears’).

With stunning illogical logic she shows how youth is the same but also different for girls the world over.

‘If you can answer riddles and rhyme land animals with sea animals, then you have passed the test and it is clear that you don’t like boys’.

I see children learning about themselves and approaching adulthood. Interacting with significant adults such as the teacher who ‘drank children-tears, ate boy-humiliation and devoured a girls pain’. I join them in embracing their culture and community and the ways beyond these islands. I share the excitement of the first television to enter a home - and also the disappointment once they discover its limitations. No aerial equals no picture.

Once again I catch a brief glimpse of my own culture through distant eyes as the school children are made to recite Wordsworth without a clue to the true nature of a daffodil, prompting one child to suggest - ‘A daffodil is a dancer that lives in the sky’. Proving that imagination and ignorance are always more poetic than truth.

the circumnavigator

I was not afraid of time

2006-11-21T12:52:00.000Z

It seems that I got lost in the Nigerian wilderness. Bowled over by Okri's writing, I nearly forgot to leave here. So, I shall tie up my loose ends. Having finished The Famished Road, I am left with many thoughts. I will share with you this one;

Animals. Throughout The Famished Road there are many encounters with animals. Rats are frequently used in the descriptions of poverty that Azaro and his family endure. His mother is often seen ‘chasing the rats’ from under beds and tables.
The magic realism element of the novel is also present in the description of some of the animals. Azaro sees the world in a dream like way and sometimes it is not clear to him (or the reader) whether he is imagining the strange hybrids of animals that he talks about.

“I saw a tiger with silver wings and the teeth of a bull. I saw dogs with tails of snakes”

The animals that feature the most in the novel are Reptiles, in particular Lizards. At some points they seem to represent luck and fortune. A character kills a lizard and it is seen as very bad luck. At other times they almost seem to be there to guide Azaro through his life, or at least through the novel. Lizards often communicate with the narrator. There is a moment when Azaro’s father asks a lizard to leave and the reptile ‘nods three times’ before leaving.

Reptiles are often seen as intriguing and wise creatures in mythology, and they have definitely worked in creating a mysterious aura around this novel. It seems that the ones with scales know more than we think.

the navigator

rocking on the ocean, sucking up the sea

2006-11-21T12:22:00.000Z

Geography has never been my strong point. That’s why its far safer that this stays a virtual journey. My next destination is apparently Samoa. If I had to take a guess I’d head for Africa. I’d be wrong. I’d be lost.

The map shows me the way to go. Vaguely. I’m heading for some tiny dots, near other slightly larger dots. Hopefully things will magnify when I get there. Where I am promised storms and coconuts, volcanoes and bananas. Friendly people with a fierce sense of tradition.

And when my guide teases me with these words -

“ ‘I’ does not exist, I am not. My self belongs not to me because ‘I’ is always ‘we’. ”

I cannot resist. I depart across the waters - my philosopher self already halfway there.

the circumnavigator

only the dead can answer

2006-10-24T10:57:00.000Z

Ben Okri is a poet and novelist who was born in 1959. His novel The Famished Road won the Booker prize in 1991. I can't help wondering if knowing it has one this prestigious prize will affect my opinion of it. Will I expect it to be something fantastic?

The Nigeria that Ben Okri will show me is one with an ‘unforgiving climate’. It will be stiflingly hot, I need to take my time to adjust to the change of continent.

I am introduced to the Famished Road of the title straight away. I find out that the road was not always a road, it was once a river. But the river dried up. I soon realise that everything is not as it seems and that appears to be the theme for the novel.

The narrator of the story is a child named Azaro. He is a spirit child. The novel floats seamlessly between the ‘real world’ and the spirit world, but Okri writes in such a mysterious and often dreamy way that sometimes the two get blurred and I am not sure where I am. But this is not a criticism, I like the vagueness, it reminds me of drifting in and out of sleep.

One of the main characters that Azaro encounters is Madame Koto, a local bar owner. She has a lot of impact on the young boy and his family. At first Azaro is suspicious of her, but he finds her intriguing;

‘She was often digging the earth, planting a secret or taking one out’

Gradually he finds out more about her and it becomes clear to him and the reader what her motivations are.

So far it is difficult to say how I am finding Nigeria as a place. Okri’s use of magic realism means that I spend as much time in the mythical world as I do in Africa. But maybe this is my Africa for now.

the navigator

the road to paradise

2006-10-04T12:42:00.000Z

Its taken a while to get this far, but I am finally ready to see Nigeria.

It is a long way from Europe and I took the slow route. No aeroplanes for me, I wanted to feel the ground beneath my feet. I needed to take in my surroundings at eye level.

So now I am here. Ben Okri and The Famished Road await to show me around.

the navigator

watch the world dissolve

2006-08-23T11:42:00.000Z

As a small but interesting aside, The Island Walkers reminded me of reading D H Lawrence - 100 years on and with a large landscape. A story of mills and unions and strikes and redundancies. Men and women and love and loss.

The novel occassionally referred to England. One part concurred with my view when a character, originally from England, reminisces -

‘glimpses of the distant Channel, that gray, strangely heartening infinity’

And yet at another point I found the viewpoint strangely stereotyped and dated -

‘He had the English talent, so welcome to her, of making an instant party, a little conspiracy of merriment.’

As I travel further away from my island I shall keep an eye as to how my home is viewed from afar.

the circumnavigator

words fell like water

2006-08-23T11:31:00.000Z

John Bemrose introduced me to The Island Walkers. I spent time living with them, watching how life is reproduced in miniature. The Walker family represent a small version of society, and within their family we encounter even tinier examples of attempts to survive against the larger forces out to get you.

‘A large red ant crawled up Red’s tongue. He gulped wetly : gone.’

I was surrounded by individuals living in isolation. A group of people who think intensely but seem largely unable to communicate their thoughts to anyone else.

‘He was appalled by her ordinariness, by her very existence, so small and finite and limited. Her powers touched nothing beyond her, not a single blade of grass.’

People aware that the relation between them and their natural environment is often more important than relations between each other. In turn the people become like their surroundings -

‘Over the years, like two trees twining together, their trunks had fused.’

Men and women live out uncomplaining, resigned lives. Failure, misery, suffering and death are all acknowledged, accepted, anticipated. Only the younger characters strive to fight against this -

‘he hated it when his mother anticipated his thoughts; it made him feel she had stolen a piece of his future.’

the circumnavigator

turn the last page down, I'm not that far behind

2006-08-08T18:50:00.000Z

Time to travel again. And so I take a small but significant step. Across a continent, across a consciousness - a simple stride to bypass the United States. They are not my destination today. These paper boats have sailed me to those crazy shores too often. Today is about discovering places new. And so my feet fall in Canada.

A sprawling ceiling of land at the top of the world. I see vast open spaces and I welcome the chance to breathe again after the heat and the hubbub of Cuba. I see a family ready to greet me - welcome after the closed chances and mistrustful glances of Cuba.

I have my stereotype spotters guide to hand. Ever ignorant I anticipate moose and maple syrup, French spoken far from France, seal culling, beaver, geese, mounted police and humour that smirks at pleasure at not being an American.

the circumnavigator

remember they are dust

2006-07-28T14:54:00.000Z

Jergovic teaches me about Bosnian curses. He explains that they are not intended to frighten people, but to prove that the locals have an imagination. I wonder if the same can be said for storytelling. Maybe the whole point of this collection of short stories is to show the world that Miljenko Jergovic can write imaginatively about Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A lot of the stories here seem unreal. Although I am aware that it is a work of fiction, I expected snippets of reality. Then I realised that I have never been to Bosnia. And even if I had I would only have been a visitor, a tourist. Don’t the tales of cities that are not our own always seem mythical and magical? Maybe that is the beauty of Jergovic’s stories and maybe they are designed for those who come from foreign lands.

The final story deals with the burning of libraries in Sarajevo as they are bombed along with the rest of the city. As he recalls the sound and the smell of a building being destroyed, he invites me to remember the books of my childhood, the books I read now. And perhaps his final sentence ‘Gently stroke your books, dear stranger and remember they are dust’ says it all. I am no different to Jergovic, we appreciate books. I am a world apart from him – I do not know the smell of burning books.

the navigator

you have to see the waterfalls

2006-07-16T14:35:00.000Z

We are going to Jajce - a city in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. A city with a castle and a waterfall of its own. We are on a bus. People are smoking Marlboro cigarettes, the smoke is ever present as the title of the book suggests. It burns my throat.

Jergovic, the author and the man leading me on this excursion speaks from the point of view of a child. In a city where I cannot speak the language or understand the cultural differences, I may as well be an infant myself.
I feel unsure of where he is taking me. I want to cry "Are we there yet?". But I fear he may not hear me.

We pass a site where a car has crashed. Jergovic's child narrator comments on what he sees. ‘A glimpse of a mangled Fiat, a hand hanging out of the window’.
I don’t know if this is important, but I make a mental note. Maybe it’s just part of the scenery, maybe it holds greater meaning. I just don’t know. But the suspense is thrilling me…

the navigator

you got nothing to fear

2006-06-25T13:19:00.000Z

I have not travelled in a while and I am nervous. But I am ready to pick up my belongings and move again.

I am heading for Bosnia and Herzegovina, a place that I know little about.

The book I will be reading is ‘Sarajevo Marlboro’.
The author and my guide is Miljenko Jergovic. I am promised his own version of a nightmare world. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited.

the navigator

a ghost among those trees

2006-06-14T16:16:00.000Z

Other places that Arenas led me to were far more familiar and comforting - confirming the fact that while we live in different worlds shared human experience runs between us all.

Together we smiled at our memories of eating dirt as children - and making it central in much of our early play.

‘To dig out the earth was to discover unusual treasures like pieces of colored glass, snail shells, and shards of pottery.’

We clung together through our craving to stay ever close to the sea - which offered escape both mentally and physically for Arenas (in his attempt to swim away to neutral waters).

‘no one can feel despair when facing such beauty and vitality.’

We drifted away together on wild wings of recollection at our love of dreamtime.

‘To go to bed and switch off the light has been for me to submit to a totally unknown world, full of delicious as well as sinister promises.’

And we nodded together in acknowledgement of the irony that only once it is gone do we come to miss that which we spend our entire life trying to leave behind.

the circumnavigator

I came here to scream

2006-06-14T15:08:00.000Z

Reinaldo Arenas led me by the hand through his Cuba. At times we ran. At times we strolled. He showed me some places I couldn’t quite understand. And some places that I will be glad if I never see again.

He showed me a life lived within limits laid down by others - in a country where regulation increasingly restricted the modes of expression for both love and writing.

‘A sense of beauty is always dangerous and antagonistic to any dictatorship because it implies a realm extending beyond the limits that a dictatorship can impose on human beings.’

Within my mind he forged new unbreakable links between writing and love. About the necessity for both and the vital need to express them freely.

‘Writing crowned or complemented all other pleasures as well as all other calamities.’

He raised questions that ask if forbidden love is more passionate because of its desperation? and whether authors writing under censorship can learn to thrive on their limitations?

Above all he showed me how he lived as quickly and as passionately as possible with the time allowed - before his time ran out. And how he wrote while he could, with the light on his side - Before Night Falls.

the circumnavigator

the currents will shift

2006-05-08T10:53:00.000Z

I am preparing to depart. I shall slide diagonally across the ocean - heading for Cuba. An apt step for those in the know.

What I know of Cuba is a mass of vague impressions and great expectations. Fragments of sound, and names without meaning absorbed from news reports playing in my background.

Places like the Bay of Pigs and Guantánamo. Inhabited by characters calling themselves Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Elian González. A place of socialist icons exported to be sold on souvenirs. Along with cigars, heels and missiles. And revolution, revolution, revolution.

But I have a guide who will lead me through his memoir. I will ingest his memories and breathe them as my own. Step inside another skin to live for a time. To walk in his steps, through his country. Maybe some of these fragments will fall into place.

the circumnavigator

ever gloomier, ever more awake

2006-04-30T14:22:00.000Z

It is time for me to leave The Netherlands behind. Cees Nooteboom has opened my eyes to a part of Amsterdam I didn’t know existed.

Away from the clichés of sex and drugs, canals and tulips. I was shown a terrible sadness. Rituals was a tale of a man trying to get by in a world that is forever changing. It was funny and rude, miserable and unfair. But ultimately Rituals was depressingly real.

The book is only 144 pages long, and every sentence is important. When a character encounters three doves in one day, there is a reason.

The story is split into three parts and we meet our main character Inni at different points in his life. We see him age and mature like the city of Amsterdam around him.

The time feels right to leave, I have seen enough. Although, I have been left with a contradiction; On the one hand Rituals appears to tie up loose ends and conclude efficiently, but I also feel that I am taking with me unanswered questions. Maybe while Inni is content with the conclusion, my own thoughts have been stirred up.

But for now, I must depart. I have many more places to go and books to read.

the navigator

the sky of death was a sky of grey clouds

2006-04-21T14:16:00.000Z

I am in the capital city, Amsterdam. Nooteboom’s Amsterdam is dirty. It is stifling at times and I feel suffocated by the heat. The characters in Rituals drink crème de menthe. I can smell the sickly, syrupy peppermint in the air.

Just as Inni, the main character, fumbles his way through life, I try to find my way through this Dutch city. At times I feel as though I am being rushed through Amsterdam with no time to waste.

Today I have stopped to linger longer at the Prinsengracht Bridge. A bridge over one of the main canals in Amsterdam. Where cyclists ride and lovers walk.

the navigator

decline accelerates into prejudice

2006-04-19T11:16:00.000Z

‘Sometimes, countries cannot choose the manner of their deaths.’

My literary guide through Wales was Grits by Niall Griffiths.

A novel of disintegration in the name of pleasure starring a group of people huddled together at the edge of the land.

Many of my expectations have been met - and turned on their head. Misery has been handed back a hundred fold. The mountains and the valleys are paralleled in the chemical and emotional highs and lows that the characters slide through. The music of the country is techno as the land of song becomes the ‘land-a screams’.

The Welsh dragon is ever-present, chased off tin-foil in the name of fun and forgetfulness - and stag becomes hallucinated dragon and is killed in the name of driving out the English.

The leek puts in an appearance when it is given in place of flowers to an overdose recovering in hospital.

Sheep are scattered throughout the novel as soft mute witnesses to the bruising antics that surround them.

‘The mountainsides around me are dotted with white blobs of sheep - which ones are dead and which are alive I cant tell like - and several people - a different kind of sheep I suppose - are on all fours’

Sheep mirror humans - appearing to enjoy their freedom, but ultimately falling and rotting away at their last.

Drifters from the four corners of the British Isles are swept to Aberystwyth, where they linger, squeezing whatever pleasure they can find from their surroundings - until one by one they depart, dead or alive, to the next place on their list.

And so it goes that Wales cannot hold me any longer. My journey calls, I must move on.

the circumnavigator

turn the page, start again

2006-04-14T16:11:00.000Z

I began my journey on Tuesday. I am travelling clockwise around the world. I left behind the South of England and have arrived in The Netherlands, my first destination.

The book I am reading is Rituals by Cees Nooteboom, a Dutch writer who was born in The Hague in 1933.

Two other novels that I have read that were set in The Netherlands are Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach and Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. Neither of these authors are Dutch unlike my guide for this part of my journey.

I have only been here a short while, only turned a few pages, but I’m already beginning to get a strong sense of the history that is around me. I hope to find out more…

the navigator

now the time has come to leave

2006-04-13T14:36:00.000Z

So my journey begins. From the south coast of Sussex I shall travel anticlockwise around our little world. My first stop will be Wales.

I have never visited Wales. As a child I remember my father driving us across a bridge across a river and back again - just so we could say we had been there. But I have never stopped. Never set foot on Welsh soil. Never seen what differentiates it from life
on my side of the divide.

My expectations of Wales lead me to believe I will encounter dragons and song and dual language signs. Mines and misery. Slag heaps and secrets. Deep valleys and high peaks. Daffodils and leeks and sheep.

I will report my findings once I have read my way through Wales.

the circumnavigator

this moment before it takes hold

2006-03-20T12:21:00.000Z

Thank you for joining us - we will be departing very soon.

We are packing our suitcases and folding our maps.