Like Christmas, except worse (but also, better)

Here is Silversea's Silver Muse, loitering out in the Hauraki Gulf. She's been hanging around in Auckland for over a week - I was due to have lunch on board last Tuesday, though of course it was cancelled - but she finally mooched off last night, dawdling away towards Panama, where she's not due to arrive for another three and a half weeks. I nearly said there's no-one on board, but of course there is: no passengers guests, but the crew is still there, probably doing boring deep cleans and suchlike but hopefully also able to enjoy the ship's facilities for once, and keeping morale up.

I emailed our favourite wine waitress, Miriam, who's been on three of our Silversea cruises and who we last saw when we sailed on Muse over Christmas to Sydney. She told us then that she was looking forward to going home to Peru this month on leave, but now the country is in lockdown and she doesn't know when she can get back. She didn't even know in the email where they would be going in the meantime; but was immensely grateful to have wifi.

Imagine what it's like for all those cruise ship crews all over the world, trapped on board. So many of them! And most of them understandably worried about contracting Covid-19, as so many of their passengers have, especially on the Princess line ships. Hard to imagine people ever wanting to go aboard those again. I'm not even sure I fancy Silversea now - no matter how earnest, and genuine, the reassurances, having had so many examples of what perfect Petri dishes cruise ships are for stuff like this, it's impossible to ignore the possibilities.

Not that cruising, or travel of any sort, is on the cards for anybody for quite some time. New Zealand has had a state of emergency declared today and is heading tonight into a minimum of four weeks' lockdown, and after a flurry of dismayingly idiotic panic-buying at supermarkets and liquor stores, things have already gone pretty quiet out there on the streets. In town, that is - even just this morning, there was a noticeable uptick in the numbers of people out walking the tracks, roads and beaches.

We are all, like Miriam, hugely relieved to have the internet to sustain us while indoors; and those of us whose news addiction has become chronic are well served by both official news organisations, and social media. It's the intimate details supplied by last one that's made it seem a bit like Christmas - but better, because everyone is involved in preparing for, and surviving, the same event, not just Christian-derived cultures. It's amazing to think how, right around the world, everyone is simultaneously facing the same threats, challenges, irritations and boredom. As our politicians keep telling us, we're all in this together, and that's quite a comforting thought. For once, we're all on the same page, so watching the news and seeing how the pandemic is playing out in Indonesia, say, or Italy or India, it's so much easier to empathise.

In fact, it's pretty much the same feeling of connection that you get when you've actually been to those places - something I regularly harp on about here - so do a Pollyanna and fondle that thought. While you stay at home, with your fingers crossed.

R D Robinson for God (unquote)

I've just finished reading When Running Made History by Roger Robinson. I'm not a runner. I was pretty fast as a kid, but that was very long ago, and now I rarely do even the downhill jogs that were an integral part of my morning routine until Tom Cruise ruined that for me (if you want to hear that story, you'll have to ask, regular 😃 reader).

No, the initial reason I read the book was purely because RDR was one of my lecturers at Canterbury University back in 1974, and the one who made the greatest impression on me during the whole four years I was at varsity. He was different from the others: English, droll, effortlessly learned, but also lean and fit. He made academia seem glamorous. It also helped that the subject was English III - The Novel, and he was lecturing us on Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Our Mutual Friend and North & South, amongst others. That sort of brilliance would reflect well on anyone. But Dr Robinson was so comfortable in those writers' company, so familiar with them, so clear-eyed about their failings, and also so honestly admiring of their achievements, that they all merged together, members of some enviable club of literary greatness which we mere students just peered in at through the windows. 

I wasn't the only one smitten. I know of others who worked tenuous references to The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner into their essays about the narrative role of Nelly Dean, or didacticism in nineteenth-century literature, in the hope of ingratiating themselves with a man we all knew ran marathons. I never stooped so low. So I've never forgotten going to his office to pick up my marked (handwritten!) essay and getting a grin and a "Super-good!" as he handed it over. And I kept the essay, warmed to the core by the margin comment about my style, and the final one about my cogent argument and fluent writing. The sliding off-topic criticism, not so much; though it was, and still is, accurate, I'm perfectly comfortable with admitting. I've made it my thing, actually.

Anyway, the book. I'm not going to review it properly, because that would be stretching the remit of this blog - but it is entertaining, and interesting, and very readable, and much more relevant to non-runners than you might expect. RDR (can't call him Roger. Or Robinson) traces the growth of running as, originally, an eccentric past-time/obsession mostly through his own lifetime but with historical references, right up to the present where it's both an unremarkable everyday habit and an important sport. He shows how running links with, demonstrates, even drives, some important social changes during that time. What really makes the story riveting, though, is his fortuitously - or possibly not - being on the spot for a number of major events - not just world record-breaks, but internationally pivotal things like the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombings.

So that's interesting whoever you are - but, for me, there's the extra enjoyment of so many of the places he mentions where he's run, or reported on running, being part of my life experience, too. From Wellington to Ross-on-Wye, Central Park to Hyde Park, Rome to Sydney, Kenya to Christchurch - every couple of pages, there was a ping! of recognition, and instant mental transportation. And that, of course, is what this blog is about, eh: connections.

Risking 'Je suis Cheng'

I see that Queenstown, in amongst a number of other well-deserved awards, has just been voted the second most popular long-haul destination by CTRIP.com, China's largest online travel agency. I'm not sure that this is such a good thing.

It feels like a risky, non-PC and narrow-minded thing to say but, to be brutally honest, the Chinese are not my favourite tourists. Quite simply, they don't know how to behave. They're loud, pushy, ill-disciplined, have some very unfortunate personal habits, go around in large groups, and often seem to be taking small interest in the places that they're spoiling for everyone else. They remind me a bit of how the Japanese used to be when they first started travelling back in the '70s: in groups, pouring off buses to take photos of each other in front of various sights, climbing back on board again, and falling straight asleep. I still remember vividly being sent staggering off that flagstone in the middle of St Peter's Square in Vatican City from where all the columns around the outside line up. That group of excitably chattering Japanese tourists never even noticed that I was there first.

But since then they have become much more sophisticated, braver, more independent and perfectly considerate tourists. They have learned. Will the Chinese do the same? Perhaps, eventually - but there are so many more of them, newly affluent, to be making their first thrilling forays overseas that it will take a very long time for the message to spread about personal space, personal hygiene, queuing and so on. In the meantime, we'll have to put up with being crowded out and shouted down, and will have to watch where we put our feet. Such a shame, when you're in a place like Queenstown, which is all about gazing awestruck around you.

In a bit of a whirl, here...

It's a confusing time right now. I'm reviewing Thailand and Kakadu to decide whether I've written enough stories about them, so that I can go back to June and catch up on some UK material - the Forest of Bowland, for example, or maybe Lindisfarne. Meanwhile, another bit of my brain is thinking about what I need to pack for South Africa next week, and how I can avoid overlapping with stuff I need to take to the US on the day after I return from Johannesburg, because I don't want to be lying awake for those precious few hours in my own bed listening to the washing machine whirring away. It's all a bit much, especially on top of also trying to organise tradesmen - and the Council - to sort things in the house and garden so that we can sell it as soon as we get home. Too much mental activity altogether. It would be a relief to go outside and just dig clay for a few hours (don't ask). Except that now it's raining.

Occasional messages are arriving from the Firstborn, currently cruising in the Galapagos Islands, consistently raving; "Holy moley! This place is AMAAAAZING!!!" along with pics of iguanas and tortoises. Of course she's having a wonderful time. It is an amazing place, and she's got the luxury of 10 days there to explore it all, twice as long as I had, sigh. The Baby, meanwhile, is disporting herself (well, actually, working) on a billionaire's yacht in Italy, where I've hardly been at all, though I've been trying to get back there. It's very frustrating, having got an actual commission for a story, and not to be able to persuade an airline to take me there. What's that? Buy a ticket, you say? Have you NO understanding of how this travel writing thing works?! There has to be some compensation for being paid peanuts.

And finally there's Scotland in the news, about to decide whether to vote Aye or Nay, so I'm remembering being there in June (getting sunburnt!) and seeing the posters and the badges everywhere. Meantime the All Blacks are being talked about because they're playing South Africa here tomorrow and, though I'm so not a follower of them, I've been preceding them a bit this year, to Newcastle's stadium where they're playing in the RWC next year, and to Chicago where they've got a game at Wrigley Field against the US in November. Somebody in Chicago actually offered yesterday to set me up with an AB interview. Puh-leese! (But I'm not above using them to try to sell a story...)

Costa packet, probably

My goodness, that scurrilous Schettino, captain of the liner Costa Concordia, is such a cliché Italian coward that he's single-handedly revived all those old wartime jokes like the Italian flag being a white cross on a white background, and Italian tanks having four reverse gears and one forward in case of attack from behind. So thank goodness for the doughty coastguard captain Gregorio De Falco, ripping into him in such a robust fashion: the man's a hero, and more than cancels Schettino out.

From the details that are emerging of the organisation of the ship, and even its design, Italian cruisers are going to struggle to recover from such bad publicity - but the one I've travelled on, the Silversea ship Silver Whisper, was excellent. Small but perfectly-formed, it carried only 382 passengers, so it was nothing like the vast white bricks - like the Concordia and worse - that seem to be the trend these days, where you could spend a week without sighting the sea. We got on in Hong Kong, a splendid port to sail from, and were cosseted and pampered for the following week until we left the ship, reluctantly, in Shanghai - also an impressive port to sail into, which we could, being so svelte, right into the centre past all those extraordinary buildings.

The captain was Italian, not that we saw much of him, but the cruise director, whom we did, was too, and had such a comically thick accent that the Trivial Pursuit afternoons were especially challenging as we struggled not just to think of the answers, but to decipher the questions in the first place.To hear him mangle Don Quixote into 'donkey shoty' was to be totally flummoxed. But it was all good fun, and the ship was so friendly and luxurious, and the food so good, and the complimentary wine bottomless, and the bed so superbly comfortable, I would happily cruise nel modo italiano again - as long as it was with Silversea. So how pleasing that in a couple of weeks I'll be having lunch on board a sister ship, Silver Shadow, when it visits Auckland. And what a bummer, that directly afterwards I'll have to disembark again.

Not even one Cornetto, though

"Call that a bathroom? Why, it's only three times bigger than mine at home - pah!" That's what happens when you've been paraded through the swankiest suites of five flash hotels in the space of two days. Luxury fatigue: it's a sad condition.

All that said, there's no not being blown away, stunned, astonished and simply gob-smacked by The Venetian. It's the size - 3,000 suites, 10,000 employees - and the success - takes more in a year than the entire Las Vegas strip combined - but mostly the concept: recreate Venice, canals and all, indoors. It's bizarre, but so well done that it's fascinating, and easy to see how people spend all day there indoors under its permanently blue sky, wandering the shops, taking a gondola ride, watching the street entertainment, eating in one of the 30 restaurants - and then, of course, popping downstairs for a flutter in the vast casino.

Of all that, I took the gondola ride with Luciano, a real Italian opera singer in a blue-striped tshirt and red sash who had to learn how to row when he came here but belted out a mean cliche - Volare, Santa Lucia - and when asked how this Venice differed from the real one said simply, "It's cleaner."

We also visited Ice World there: an exhibition of ice sculptures - Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Taj Mahal plus animals from dinosaurs to pandas and penguins - where I went down an ice slide (fast!) and was glad after half an hour to emerge from the -15 degrees, despite my big padded coat.

And then last night we were in the packed 15,000-seat theatre for a Cirque du Soleil show, Zaia, which was as spectacular as ever and left me feeling astonished and physically feeble.

There were other things today - cemetery with PO Box tombs as well as mini-mansions; old colonial houses; lotuses and white herons; and lots of delicious Portuguese food - but mainly it was all about the Venetian. Just as well really, as there was a tremendous thunderstorm this morning which dropped the temperature to a mere 25 degrees, but hoisted the humidity to 95%.

Super Value

Big week. Back from America, straight into a whirl of teaching, deadlines and celebrations, all adding up to a jumble of countries and memories.

The First-Born turned 21, and her slide show was a mix of photos from England, New Zealand, Australia and France: so many lovely moments, so long ago - apparently - but all still so familiar. School is French and German and Latin (Video, puellae, in me omnium vestrum ora atque oculos esse conversos... I knew that sentence would come in handy one day). And the deadlines were Queensland and Glasgow. Oh, and I had a birthday in there somewhere too.

What with all that, the late nights and the jet lag, it's a triumph that I still know which way is up.