Woo woo

Jet lag coming up. Changing time-zones, heading east against the sun, a long time in the pleasant but dislocating (literally) out-of-time capsule of the aeroplane cabin... it's the price to be paid for long-distance travel (in other words, virtually all travel from New Zealand). Not complaining, really, but it makes that zoned-out feeling of unreality on arrival in a foreign country just that much more intense.

You know how repeating some perfectly innocuous word over and over makes it eventually sound peculiar? And look odd, too, written down? That's similar to the phenomenon of depersonalisation, when you look at yourself in the mirror and wonder who that person is, even though you know it's you. All you can see is a stranger. It happens often when people are very tired. It's a kind of jamais vu - you think you've never seen that face before. Really messes with your head, but it's also kind of fun, to see yourself as, presumably, everybody else does - as long as it's only temporary, of course.

Travel has an effect a bit like that. You go to strange places and spend all your time looking around you, noticing the buildings all the way up to the roof, staring at the people, admiring the scenery, remarking on all the things that seem so different. So far, so normal. But then you get back home again, to your familiar surroundings, and because you've got into the habit of using your eyes properly instead of just manoeuvring through your day on automatic, you look around you and see things as a stranger would: the buildings, the people, the gardens, roads, shops, landscape. It's all fresh and attractive and somehow exotic, and you feel like a tourist in your own country.

If  people could just conjure up a bit of depersonalisation, or derealisation, on demand, they could have all the stimulation and novelty of an overseas holiday with none of the expense. But as I'm a small part of the travel industry and my job is to encourage people to buy flights, tours and accommodation, you didn't read that here.

That was never 11 days we had just then

Why yes, that was rather a long gap between posts. Mainly it was because of marketing: selling stories linked to events and dates, and though the ones I've been fully occupied writing about are marking the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic a whole month from now, and Anzac Day even further away on April 25, there's been a bit of a rush to do it because I've got some travelling coming up. On Sunday I'm being whisked off to Buenos Aires on LAN's lovely business class, and thence to Iguazu Falls, Lima (again) and then, most excitingly, Easter Island. I once reviewed a book that was set there - rather unimaginatively titled 'Easter Island' - by Jennifer Vanderbes, who had clearly done a great deal of research into ancient angiosperms that she didn't want to waste, so by the end of the book I was quite the expert (temporarily) on fossilised pollen. Never heard the term 'palynology' before? Now you have.

Then after I've been home for less than a fortnight, I'm away again, for an incredible 6 weeks this time, to Europe: partly private but mostly work, and it's going to be very busy. Fun and interesting, but busy, and tiring. It doesn't help that there are three very old animals in this house, who miss me when I'm gone, and who so far have always been here when I've got back from a trip but, one day...

So anyway, the Titanic. I keep bumping into it, so to speak - of course, in Ireland last year, when we went to Cobh which was the ship's last port of call before setting off across the Atlantic, and where there was a really good exhibition in the old railway station there. Then there was an astonishingly, not to say anally, comprehensive travelling exhibition that I came across while I was in Copenhagen, that absorbed me for the best part of two hours while rampaging Hamburg football fans laid waste to the city outside (well, almost). We'll be going to a new one at Greenwich Maritime Museum while we're in London; there are, I discovered, others in Southampton, Liverpool and Cherbourg, all Titanic sister cities that I've been to; and several in Halifax, Nova Scotia where I haven't been, but have been increasingly hankering to go to over the last few years. Lots of the recovered bodies were buried there, including one J. Dawson, who was actually James, a boiler-room hand, but that doesn't stop a steady stream of fans of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack going there to leave red roses on the gravestone:

Silver Shadow

Yeah, well, sorry about that. I had fine intentions of taking a photo of my food today because I knew it would be beautifully presented, but lunchtime wine has frequently been my downfall and today was no exception. So you'll just have to imagine a creamy yellow pyramid of mango jelly in a pool of finely-cut salsa of mango, kiwifruit and strawberry, and a piped dollop of coconut cream on top with a, hmm, credit card of dark chocolate inserted into it. Look, there's still half the chocolate left - just build on that. Use your imagination, dammit. It followed deliciously intensely-flavoured chicken soup and super-tender beef with Yorkshire pud.

I was on board the Silversea ship Silver Shadow, sister to Silver Whisper on which I sailed a couple of years ago from Hong Kong to Shanghai. It's a small ship, just the 382 suites, and both classy and friendly, and we had a ball. I loved that everything was included, tips, drinks, excursions and all (not that, ahem, I was paying) and that the staff had learned our names within the first 24 hours, and used them. Super comfortable, elegant, and such fabulous food at the 6 or so restaurants that it was a mercy we were only on board for a week or so.

This one is in Auckland before heading south to Cook Strait and then across the Tasman - which takes an astonishing 3 days - to Sydney and then along the south coast to Melbourne, Adelaide, Port Lincoln, Albany and Fremantle (tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and tick). Then it's up through Indonesia and away to more exotic destinations. The six Silversea ships are constantly circling the world on the most mouth-watering itineraries, including, since they're conveniently small, the Inside Passage to Alaska, which I would dearly love to sail along one day to see the bears and the salmon and the glaciers. And to go there on a Silversea ship would be best of all.

Cruising into 2012

What better way to spend the first (uncharacteristically damp, grey and humid) day of the New Year than by indulging in some movie nonsense on the pretext of revisiting locations from the old one? Thus it was that I spent more than two hours twitching and wriggling nervously in my seat as I watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol work through its ridiculous story, told with every tool of movie trickery in the box. Steve Jobs (RIP) would have been thrilled to see the casual and ubiquitous use of iPads and iPhones to track and identify villains as well as a host of other useful spy-themed apps. The most thrilling part though appealed to a much more basic and age-old human instinct: fear of heights.

Which of course took Tom to Dubai, home of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, at 828m and 160 storeys, to do a Spidey up the outside with a dodgy gripper glove and then a Canyon Swing back down again and in through the window. As you do. The views down that extraordinary shiny silver building were dizzyingly spectacular, the surrounding buildings, the vast fountain complex and the ground itself so incredibly far away. I wish I had had the time to go up to the Observation Deck, but you have to book or pay some huge sum, and I was, as usual, on a tight schedule; but I did get to see it from the bottom, which was amazing enough - although very hard to fit into a viewfinder.

The movie started in Budapest, which I was interested to see as I'll be going there in May; then from Dubai went to Mumbai - where I haven't been, does Delhi count? - and finished up in Seattle, on the waterfront where we had a nose around, were most impressed by the Aquarium, and took a ferry from across to Bainbridge Island, which looked lovely but again we had no time to look around (aren't you glad you're not a travel writer, hogtied by the tyranny of the itinerary?). There was even a glimpse of San Francisco, where a chunk got taken off the top of the Transamerica Pyramid by an at-the-last-second aborted nuclear missile. So, pretty much been there - but done all that? Thankfully, not.

Traditions old and new

Still with the Christmas stockings, the healthy breakfast spurned in favour of chocolate, deliberately unlabelled gifts under the tree that no-one could identify; plus someone who shall be nameless who turned out to be too fat for a Santa suit: no comment. Pine needles and scented lilies.

Then acrimonious squabbling over the Secret Santa rules, a long cheerful dinner at cobbled-together tables with ham and salmon and baby carrots but no gravy (forgotten) and no herbs in the stuffing balls (forgotten); and pavlova with raspberries and strawberries, and pudding with sauce but no brandy butter (forgotten). And feeble cracker jokes (a locomotive made of toffee? A chew-chew train) but no solemn toast to Absent Friends (shamefully forgotten this year). But new friends at the table, Rosa from Honduras (where there are 7 million people and only one McDonald's) and Andrea from Seattle (really? We went there last year!) and Skyping to a prettily frigid Winnipeg and phoning a damp and dismal Lancashire.

Then home with a share of the left-overs for a nap in the sun, the Queen's Message, toffee and chocolates, Tim Minchin, Graham Norton, the Royal Variety Performance with two Kiwis - Hayley Westenra and the Boy with Tape on his Face - and no ads. It'll do.

Ahhhh, pine!

The tree went up yesterday, possibly the latest ever in our personal history: delayed by the flit down south to walk the Hollyford. "It doesn't feel like Christmas," wailed the Baby when we got back, and then sat and Grinched while we decorated it, hanging up all the old friends that it's always a pleasure to unwrap from the tissue every year. The little red glass Austrian post-horn, the English red phone box, the heavy glass New York orb, the Australian kookaburra, the fat pig from Leavenworth, WA, the Mickey Mouse bell from Disneyland - all reminders of end-of-year trips, when everyone is building up to Christmas and wherever you go looks especially pretty.

I think it's a great time to travel, even if it means early winter in the northern hemisphere: no such thing as bad weather, remember, just the wrong clothes. There's a buzz in the air, the locals as pleased and eager as the tourists, a satisfying synchronicity that you don't get at non-festival times of the year; also, it's interesting to see, amongst so much that's the same, what is different about foreign Christmases. Like the candles lit on family graves in Salzburg, or the cute little huts set up along Nyhavn in Copenhagen where, had we been just a few days later, we could have bought mulled wine and cinnamon biscuits and lovely crafts and gifts. Or special (and especially fattening) flavoured coffees at Starbucks in Seattle, or the Rockefeller Centre ice rink in New York, or the sprigs of holly on the uniform overcoats worn by sweating cast members at Disneyland in sunny LA...

This year's new tree decoration is a Saint Nicholas from Copenhagen in fetching curly-toed boots, which makes a nice connection with the Arabian Nights slippers I saw in the souqs in Dubai, where I stopped off both going and returning from Denmark and where I would have found it rather harder, I'm guessing, to find much that was Christmassy at all.

Snap!

Look, I'm sorry to keep harping on about this mountain, but it's pretty spectacular - pretty and spectacular - you have to agree: certainly Ellen in St Louis does, envying our having to drive only 4 hours or so to get to it. She would have to drive for a day, she says, to reach a mountain, and even then it wouldn't be as pretty as Mt Taranaki.

But of course there are lots of stunning mountains in the US, although rather further away. I have to admit to a preference for the volcanoes: they're so much more satisfyingly shaped, there's something very aesthetically pleasing about that regular cone. I was thrilled to see Mt Barker so clearly when we were in Washington state last year, poking up unexpectedly on the horizon behind Seattle and becoming clearer and clearer as we drove north. And then when we came back across Puget Sound from the San Juan islands, there it was, looming up over the sea, white and sparkling and huge.

It's in the photo I chose for November when I was compiling my calendar for this year, so it's there on the kitchen wall right now, a white triangle peeping up behind a mass of brilliant orange pumpkins growing out at a pick-your-own farm where families were wheeling their toddlers round in barrows, scouting round for the best-looking ones for their Thanksgiving decorations. But it's the coastal one I'm going with today, because the shape shows up better. Remarkably similar to Taranaki, don't you think?

Lounging around

I'm back in Dubai's shiny new airport, all marble and stainless steel and reflective surfaces over vast areas of space. There's a separate entrance for First and Business class passengers that's most spacious of all, but they don't tell you that after you've been wafted through check-in, you have an enormously long hike to get where the action, and all the plebs, are.

I had a small stoush with a bolshy young Arab lady who tried to push in the queue at the shop where I was offloading the last of my local currency: boy, did she argue! But I stood my ground and she, in a hurry, eventually stormed off with a lot of huffing. The Brits may have moved out of Dubai sixty years ago, but that's no reason to abandon one of their most useful gifts to civilisation.

And now I'm in the lounge, disappointed that I can't get my iPhone to connect wirelessly (hence no photos), struggling with a public keyboard with most of the letters worn off, and rather tempted to have my shoes shined, for the novelty of it - the last time was in New York, years ago - but anxious that it may involve tipping, and I have no more cash (see above). I do have some Samoan currency that I forgot to put into the big glass charity jars back in Auckland, but pretty though the notes are, I doubt they would be welcomed. Certainly the man at the Dubai Mall money exchange yesterday laughed with genuine amusement at the very idea.

This is a very big lounge, and somewhere in it is a rack of newspapers that evidently includes the Sunday Times, so that's my next mission. I do keep busy, on these trips.

Under the volcano

Another amazing coincidence! And a mystery...

Beleaguered Boeing is finally bringing their troublesome Dreamliner to New Zealand next month, Air New Zealand having ordered several and having had to be very patient as deliveries are currently 3 years behind schedule. Clearly, then, it's the ideal time to write up our visit last year to their assembly plant at Everton not far from Seattle (my Seattle story was published in the Herald on Sunday just a couple of days ago, but that's a piffling coincidence, I'm picky now). They told us on the tour there over that astonishingly huge building ("big enough to enclose the whole of Disneyland - and the carpark!" they boasted) that William Boeing's first two planes, built in 1916 by the man himself and his partner Conrad Westervelt, little biplanes with floats, were sold a couple of years later to New Zealand, which was mildly exciting to us at the time.

Doing a bit more research today, though, I've discovered that they were used by a flying school here in Auckland to train pilots, and on inaugural air mail deliveries within NZ. When the flying school closed down in 1924 the planes were put into storage - inside a tunnel in North Head, where I went last Friday to watch a yacht race. And there, apparently, they remain to this day, despite a number of attempts to locate them by both private people and Motat, the technology museum where the Baby works part-time, and where their new aviation hangar has just been opened, which the OH visited on Sunday, and where the planes would no doubt be displayed if they had been found.

As it is, however, their exact whereabouts are unknown, walled-up and concreted into an unidentifiable disused tunnel under this extinct volcano-turned-fort, the men who did the work having pretty much passed on by now, and the authorities being curiously unhelpful to those trying to solve the mystery. What a ripping yarn!

Giant inflated - head?

When I say that my head's all over the place, I mean that literally (almost). Busily catching up with writing after - what? eight trips away so far this year? - I've been working on stories about England, Ireland, Macau, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Mauritius, and lining up Seattle and more Australian stories to do next. The NZ stories were Waiheke Island and Lake Wakatipu, which is rather perverse of me since most of the action at the moment is right here in Auckland.

That blimp-like affair is the inflatable rugby ball containing a full-on Tourism NZ blitz to convince potential tourists to get themselves out here: it's usually positioned somewhere significant overseas. Right now it's on Queen's Wharf on the waterfront ('Party Central' they insist on calling it) and I had a look at it the other day, though even soon after it opened on a Friday lunchtime the queue was too long for me to bother with. Another day - there are enough of them still. Weeks to go yet till it's all over. Sigh.

I did go in The Cloud (aka The Slug) though, which was much nicer than it had promised to be when first proposed, and had a couple of huge screens showing an imaginative presentation of uniquely Kiwi features, from Weta Workshop to computerised cow eartags, all mixed in with Scenery, that made me a little pink with pride - even though the actual displays were somewhat mystifying. It probably was clever, inventing a way of making plastic chain mail with no joins - but what is it for? There was a lot of interest in the jetpack, but it looked a cumbersome beast and nothing like in the comics. The wood-veneer Vespa was, er, novel.

Most diverting, though not Kiwi at all of course, were the Segways being used outside by staff pretending to be serious, swooping up and down the wharf transporting sections of temporary fencing. Ubercool, as ever.

12/09

For us New Zealanders, that's when 9/11 occurred: we're 16 hours ahead of New York, and it was September 12th when we woke, an astonishing 10 years ago tomorrow, to the news of what had happened soon after midnight our time. Or not, in my case - busy with getting children off to school, and myself to my undemanding little job in the office at the younger one's school across the road, it wasn't till I got to my desk that I realised something was up, and a wide-eyed teacher there told me the incredible story. I rushed to the assembly room where the television was on, showing over and over those images for which the word 'shocking' just doesn't measure up, and listened to the stunned commentary from presenters and journalists who were having equal difficulty in believing what they were describing.

I've never known that feeling before: I've heard unexpected, terrible news before, but the scale of the attacks, the recognition of the coldly inspired leap of imagination that led to them, and the irrevocable loss of innocence that they brought about, plus the simultaneous annihilation of thousands of ordinary peoples' lives, was unique. It's no exaggeration to say that we all, all around the world, took a step together when we heard the news, into a future that was instantly very much less safe. It's affecting us still, in so many ways, and there's no going back.

One thing that I hadn't expected, on our family trip to England and France in July, was how astonished the girls would be to experience the level of security that's standard there: the bag checks, the x-ray machines, the CCTVs everywhere - just to go up the Eiffel Tower, or into the Tower of London. Shuffle, queue, wait... so tedious, in probability so unnecessary, yet absolutely inescapable.

Though not here, which is why the girls hadn't expected it. In most people's daily life here, apart from at the airport, there are no obvious security checks, no searches, no constraints on our freedom. It's something we take for granted most of the time - but it's good to be reminded of how lucky we are in New Zealand. There are advantages in being so far below the rest of the world's radar.

Feedback!!!

Well here's something interesting, for a couple of reasons: a first-person account from a reader in Vermont of the floods there, with personal drama and a heartfelt plea that I'm happy to pass on -

<< What a coincidence! I am a reader of yours FROM Vermont! Yes, it is devastating and sad here. There were at least 3 of the 7 historical covered bridges torn down - monuments to Vermont's history and pride. It is so sad to see them go. I hope they will be re-built. I spent the entire day Sunday fending off a brook that turned into a raging river from my parents' home in Wells, VT. The brook, which is normally about 6 feet wide and knee high ended up being about 75 feet across, and 9ft deep. The water was so powerful, it moved a 3ton boulder 10ft downriver. That could have been our home. Luckily, due to the quick actions of helpful townspeople, we were able to save the house, with only several inches of water in the basement. We did lose our entire yard and our water well, but the house is still intact. We were one of the isolated towns for two days. We were able to leave and return to our home in Burlington, VT late Tuesday night. That was my experience, and we were SO lucky. There are still many people without electricity, shelter, and food is dwindling in the isolated towns, with no ETA on supplies. Check out the Vermont Red Cross site and donate if you are able: www.redcrossvtnhuv.org/index.asp?IDCapitulo=44W8UXGL8L >>

I do hope life becomes much easier very soon for everyone in Vermont. Thank you for getting in touch.

And the other interesting thing about this comment is that it shows there are actually people reading this blog who aren't my husband or random Googlers who've landed on the site when looking for 'French flag' or 'medieval serving wenches' or, most mysteriously, 'surf board hair loss'. It's very heartening.

Goodbye Irene

Hurricane Irene has gone to Canada - well, not a hurricane any more - but she's left a lot of damage in her wake. Not in Manhattan as was feared, but elsewhere, including Vermont, and on the news tonight there was sad footage of a covered bridge being swept away. It looked a lot like this one, and it may actually have been the very one - whatever, it's a shame. Those bridges are so pretty, and such a significant part of the scenery there, I can understand why on the soundtrack people were wailing.

We only had a day in Vermont, sneaking over the border from a trip sponsored by Tourism Massachusetts, because we wanted to see the bridges, and buy some maple syrup. I've still got the leaf-shaped bottle, refilled many times over; and remember clearly how neat and lovely the countryside was that autumn, all the leaves so colourful and pumpkins everywhere.

On the news it looks dreadful, brown water rampaging over roads and through towns, breaking bridges, houses, fences and barns; it's going to leave an awful mess. Oh, nature is giving people such a run-around this year, all over the world.

All shook up

So they had an earthquake in Virginia yesterday, a 5.8 which caused alarm and despondency in New York and Washington, broke the tips off some spires on the National Cathedral and sent the mergansers at the Zoo flocking into the water in the clear expectation that there would be no tsunami. Pft. Well, 5.8 is a decent size, I suppose, and it's certainly a rare event on the US east coast - so rare that it seems no-one knew the drill about desks and doorways - but still, pft.

Canterbury's up to 8457 aftershocks now since 4 September - almost a whole year ago, amazingly - 28 of them over magnitude 5, two of them bigger than 6. And many of them have been very shallow, so they didn't slip by unnoticed. There've been three 4+ shakes in as many days since Saturday. People's hair is falling out with the stress, there are still 1600 households unable to use their own toilets, and the announcements have begun about whose homes and suburbs are unsuitable for future habitation. Demolition in the city centre is continuing apace and every few days there's an announcement of another notable building having been condemned.

But although it's tempting just to smile and shrug, and to think along the lines of 'we should be so lucky', I do understand all the excitement and anxiety about the Virginian quake, especially amongst New Yorkers. After all, they have a big anniversary of their own looming up.

Over it

It's been not quite the Black Dog of Depression on my shoulder, more the Grey Cat of Jet Lag sleeping on my face, but the effects have felt the same, especially when it's dragged (oh, how it's dragged) on for nine days, sucking the colour out of the day and making the endless night feel stuck at the 3am pits when the past is one long mistake, the future a downward spiral and all hope dead. But last night I finally slept through like a baby (actually not at all like the babies of my acquaintance) and woke at a sensible hour feeling refreshed and interested and light, so normal service can now be resumed.

Stephen Fry has just arrived in the country to film on The Hobbit, and is tweeting tetchily about feeling "weirdly high and spaced-out" after flying in from South Africa, so he has my sympathies (also, it must be rather irritating to be constantly mistaken on the street for James May - what are you thinking, Wellingtonians?) Coincidentally, Hugh Laurie is in Auckland this week filming Mr Pip. The Americans think he's theirs, and cool, thanks to House, but we've known him since A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Blackadder so we're not fooled by the jeans and stubble, and know what a cheerful (and thoroughly English) clown he really is.

The Baby was er, babysitting Motat yesterday while a set was being constructed in the blacksmith's forge for Mr Pip filming to take place there on Friday - it'll be exciting for them to have a bit of glamour in their midst. Motat (Auckland Museum of Transport and Technology) is a worthy place, but old-fashioned in a way that doesn't quite pull off charming, unfortunately. They have good stuff there, but it's not well displayed, and most of the hands-on stuff seems to be broken. It really needs an injection of cash and some pizazz in its management - if it could aim to be like the Yakima Valley Museum in the otherwise fairly undistinguished town of Yakima in Washington state, it would be beating the visitors off with sticks, rather than desperately enticing them in with free entry.

Their stuff was just as eclectic as Motat's - from a skunk pelt to a butter churn operated by a sheep to a piece of hardtack from the Civil War - but the display was bright and open and inviting, with lots of colour (especially the collection of neon signs) and entertaining storyboards. It probably helped that we were welcomed by the director, David, who was bubbling over with enthusiasm. I love enthusiastic people; and I hate that jet lag makes enthusiasm impossible. I'm glad to be over it.

(What a shame, then, that I'm going to Macau on Sunday, starting the whole sorry business all over again.)

Fishy tales

With the aftershock total now 8175, any small bit of cheer is welcome from Christchurch, so it was heartening yesterday to hear a good news story for once, about the two goldfish Shaggy and Daphne discovered still alive in their tank in an office in the Red Zone, 134 days after the building was evacuated following the February quake. There was some dark muttering about their having lived off the corpses of their disappeared companions, but informed opinion has it that they have simply been in shut-down mode because of low temperatures (and snow is just the latest environmental insult that Cantabrians have had to cope with), the missing fish probably having been swept over the top in a post-quake mini tsunami.

From one extreme to another, my Ningaloo Reef whale shark story is recently out too, on the cover of the Herald's travel section, which was rather exciting - especially as my Leavenworth one was inside too. And then this week it was Reunion Island's turn. As ever, feast or famine - which is how it must be feeling for Shaggy and Daphne now.

Geography

Just gotta love these daylight legs. Even though Air NZ's entertainment system is SECOND TO NONE in its depth and width and accessibility from the moment you board, and I've revelled in getting deep into entire series of hi-qual TV series ('Episodes' - yes!), there's nothing like the real-time, real view from the window.
Of course, you need to be over land for it to hold more than a few minutes' interest - there's a limit to how long you can concentrate on empty sea - so unless you're flying over Oz, that means a long wait on any ex-NZ flight.
But so worth it! How much fun it is, looking down on vast landscapes that change so quickly and that feature recognisable things like Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon! (re which: never mind from the moon - actually, myth - how stunning to be impressed by its size even from 33,000 feet in a 777).
And even when the spoilsport cloud muscles in and wrecks the view, there's still the airshow map showing that we're passing over places with names like Salt Lake City, Mt Rushmore and - whoa! Gimli!!! Ok, waiting for Aragorn to pop up now...
And has anyone ever counted Canada's lakes? Seems excessive to me - but maybe that's the port talking. Even though I'm on the starboard side, hahaha! Ok, getting dark, going to sleep now.

Welcome to the USA. No, really.

So now I have to eat my words. Here I am in transit at LAX and it's not hateful at all. We've got nearly two hours of kicking our heels in what is pretty much a sensory deprivation tank (although with free WiFi, coffee and snacks so really not very deprived at all) - but everyone has been friendly and relaxed.
There was that usual "Let's photograph and fingerprint everyone in the world! Twice! Or as often as we can!" project going on of course, but we were able to take our own time about going to get it done. And though Rodriguez was thrown by a previous Press visa, that caused great anxiety at the border last time on the way to Seattle, I didn't get growled at this time. Which is always nice.
So it's sunny and warm and smoggy outside, and the girls were squeaking with excitement as we came in to land, but we're cut off from it all in this no-man's land until we set off again on the next leg to London. Yay!

Counting down

Also, gearing up: for the big family expedition to England next week, where I will be the only one of us in the aliens queue at immigration, all the others smugly flashing their British passports.

There will be Paris, London, Harry Potter, 'Downton Abbey', Oxford college accommodation, old friends, older aunts, Ireland and Hong Kong. Air NZ will be wafting us there in Premium Economy (as long as Chile's volcano allows us to get off the ground) and returning us in Business. The only fly in the ointment is having to pass through LAX, where even posters everywhere encouraging passengers to expect friendly treatment from staff (and where to report it if not) aren't enough to compensate for the stupidly, unreasonably, inefficiently, massively inconveniently, cruelly stringent security measures that make being even (especially) a transit passenger there simply hateful. HATEFUL!

Heathrow isn't a bundle of laughs either, full of officious jobsworths glorying in their power to make innocent, tired, anxious passengers even more miserable; and it's dirty and crowded and uncomfortable and inefficient. But on past experience, the uniformed non-entities at LAX enforcing absurd levels of security on innocent see-aboves take the cake for delivering an unpleasant, tedious, wearying and worrying un-Welcome to the USA.

Ringing bells

The OH knows he’ll be in big trouble if he ever buys me my favourite perfume. For years now I’ve been training myself to associate the scent of Lancome’s Miracle with setting off on a plane trip; so as soon as I’m airside, I swing by the duty-free shop for a squirt from their tester bottle. Already, if I catch a lingering whiff on my watch-strap when I’m back home, I can instantly visualise the airport, the passport and boarding pass in my hand, the planes outside — and feel the excitement. The idea is that when I’m a shrivelled old lady and stuck in a chair, I can sniff the bottle and get instantly high: say, 30,000 feet.

When we travel, we take photos and buy souvenirs, but all too often ignore the other senses, which can be much more effective in summoning vivid memories. Smell seems to be a particularly direct route back to the past, although it’s not always possible to reproduce once back home. This is certainly a good thing in the case of the stinking durian, even if it does evoke tropical markets with all their colour and buzz. But vanilla will take me back to Reunion Island, where it’s grown and processed; 4711 cologne to the elegant shop in Cologne where a perfumed fountain tinkling in the corner scents the air; frangipani to Tahiti; cloves to Indonesia.

Taste always works well, although foods that are still limited to their places of origin by definition won’t work as memory aids: you’re not going to find roasted guinea pig, casseroled fruit bat or coconut crab on any menu here. But something you taste for the first time on holiday is good, so for me Parmesan cheese means Sydney, parsnips are England, quinoa is Peru, chowder means Vancouver.

Though crowing roosters bring back Bali for me, sirens and whistles evoke New York, and cawing crows epitomise Australia, music is the best audio trigger. I first came across the quirky compositions of the Penguin Café Orchestra thanks to the driver of my car in Mauritius; an M2M hit sweetly sung to us by our guide at the end of a tour always reminds me of China; and Kelly Clarkson got me dancing on Reunion Island (possibly also the rum). Hear the music, and I’m there: so in Tasmania I used repeat plays of my latest favourite song to fix the association. Now just the first few notes take me back to the Bay of Fires, the spinifex seeds tumbling over the hard sand, the sun on the rocks, the turquoise sea.

This value-adding holiday tip is brought to you by P. Wade: that’s P as in Pavlov.