This post is a blatant cheat, inspired purely by guilt. It's not, despite the date, and the photo, a cheery greeting to you [all] at the start of a new year, full of hope for the joy and interest it will bring. In actual fact, today is mid-July, past halfway through a year that has continued with the dreary sequence of horrible events around the world that has been the norm for so, so long now, to which we have become accustomed, if not inured.
Even the photo is a lie, since I took it in April as I walked home from my coffee run to Oneroa - clearly the work of some visitor as loose with the facts as I am today.
So why am I writing this? Good question (as every single interviewee these days begins every single answer, while they desperately concoct their reply). Habit, personal pressure, reluctance to accept, despite plenty of proof, that my travel-writing career is over - but mainly mild defiance that the blog's concept (see upper right) of travelling resulting in connection around the world is these days a disadvantage, given all the disasters, wars and dissent that daily comprise the news.
When you've been to places, met the people, eaten the food, admired the scenery and learned some of the history, you carry them with you ever after, so what happens to them, happens to you in some degree. World events then aren't just some item on the news to sit through while you wait for the weather forecast, but something you can identify with, sympathise with, feel. And that has to be a good thing, surely? Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is better.
Meantime, there is always a bit of good to find in anything, even the thick and persistent fog that meant getting to my daughter across the city took three hours yesterday: because of it, I discovered the previously unknown to me existence of the fogbow. Which today made it onto threeNews -
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