2010 by numbers

There we go, another twelve months done and dusted. In the spirit of the media at this time of year, as this one winds to a warm and muggy close, I've been doing some totting up:

• 8 working trips (when are they not, any more?)
• 7 international (Australia 4 times, Cook Islands, Mauritius/Reunion, USA)
• 1 domestic (West Coast)
• 26 flights (plus 1 in a hot-air balloon)
• 83700 kilometres flown
• 22 airline meals eaten (best: Air Mauritius business class; worst: Air New Zealand economy - sorry, Air NZ, but that shepherd's pie? Disgusting)
• 1 aeroplane walked on (747 at Longreach)
• 6 train trips (TranzAlpine Christchurch-Greymouth, Spirit of the Outback Rockhampton-Longreach, Westlander Charleville-Brisbane, Amtrak Vancouver-Seattle)
• 67 nights spent away from home
• 52 different hotel beds slept in (most comfortable: Te Waonui Forest Retreat at Franz Josef - loved that goosedown mattress!)
• 10 3B1 notebooks filled (1 mislaid, sob) (UPDATE: Found!)
• 51 stories published in 13 publications with a further 14 sold
• 6 exotic creatures cuddled (panda, koala, kangaroo, python, baby croc, lizard)
• 1 horse ride (not enough!), 3 snorkelling sessions, 1 bike ride, 2 kayaks
• 4 times underground in caves and mines, 3 towers climbed
• 11 museums visited, 3 rum distilleries, 2 sugar refineries, 1 model ship workshop, 1 salt pan
• 6408 photos taken
• 1 time caught with a flat battery
• 38 rages over exorbitant internet charges (best: Mauritius and USA; worst: Australia)
• 213 times unzipped the wrong pocket in my backpack
• and too many friendly and interesting people met to put a number to.

So, a good year for me and lots of reasons to look forward to the dawn of the next. Yay!

Hairy!

There's a farmer in Auckland hospital tonight after a run-in with a Highland cow which took exception to being loaded onto a truck, and attempted to gore him. He only managed to avoid being stabbed by hanging on to her horns while she did her best to smear him into the grass, crushing his chest and leaving him with "considerable injuries".

If I'd known they could be so savage, I wouldn't have been quite so relaxed with the herd of 'hairy coos' we came across in Scotland. We'd been poking around the Trossachs and followed a winding lane to Balquhidder to find the grave of Rob Roy ('MacGregor despite them' on the stone) when we spotted a herd of these cattle in a paddock beside a loch.

We asked if we could go and photograph them and the man (who, I now realise, probably wasn't the farmer, just a workman busy repointing the barn - and not a stockman at all) said we could, so we blithely trotted off and spent about thirty minutes snapping away at these cows with their calves. It was probably a bit dumb, and we were lucky not to be trampled by several dozen over-protective mothers - but boy, those calves were cute!

Teddy bears - through and through. Who knew their mothers could be more like grizzly bears?

Stop Press

Good grief, Boxing Day brought another earthquake in Christchurch - 4.9 this time, compared with 7.1 in September, but closer and shallower, so feeling more violent, and doing damage to buildings that had escaped unscathed, like the lovely old Press building in Cathedral Square, which was evacuated when cracks appeared in the frontage.

Meanwhile, there have been massive floods in Queensland in places like Rockhampton and Bundaberg where we visited earlier this year, and dramatic blizzards on the east coast of the US, with people stranded, freezing, in subway carriages as well as in cars and airports. Heavy snow continues to make life difficult in Britain, and Haitians still struggling with the aftermath of their earthquake have had to cope with hurricanes and cholera as well.

It's been a dreadful year for natural disasters: devastating floods in Pakistan and elsewhere, earthquakes all over the place, tornadoes and typhoons, the cyclone in the Cooks, killer heatwaves, the Icelandic eruption. Then there's the oil still killing the wildlife and making people miserable in the Gulf of Mexico, mining tragedies (and only one miracle), the dreadful toxic spill in Hungary... Too many to remember, though no doubt the year-in-review programmes about to clog up the TV schedules this weekend will do their best to remind us.

Everywhere I go, people say that the weather is different, less predictable, the patterns changed, the extremes more pronounced. Whether this is a permanent or temporary climate change I wouldn't dare to say, but it's clear that we need to take more care in how we treat this planet, just in case. It's the only one we've got, and it's a beauty.

Baubles

Though I can't help getting sucked in sometimes, I've never been one for buying souvenirs when I travel - not of the Greetings from Blackpool sort, anyway: that's just stuff, ie what we could all do with less of in our lives. But Christmas tree ornaments are quite another matter, especially as we seem to travel most frequently late in the year, when they're on display in the shops: it's lovely to choose something that's not just pretty but personally meaningful too. While all the usual Christmas Day dramas are played out beneath the tree (nit-picking refinements of Secret Santa rules, Jekyll/Hyde transformations from bright-eyed to glazed, gradual shifts of social power from one generation to the next), the decorations hang there, reminders of other places, other times.

The pretty pig above is from Kris Kringle, the Christmas shop in Leavenworth's Front Street, open every day but one in the year: two storeys of sparkle and glitter of every shape and type you could imagine, and staffed by relentlessly cheerful assistants who have a superhuman resistance to the year-round continuous musak of carols and bells. Tucked into Washington state's Cascade mountains, Leavenworth is a Bavarian town that's picturesque all year round - certainly in autumn, when we were there - but really comes into its own at Christmas when the lights shine brightly (but aren't allowed to twinkle) and the snow lies fluffy along the streets.

 

New York would be fabulous at Christmas too, with skating at the Rockefeller Centre, muffled-up carriage rides through Central Park, the lights on Fifth Avenue, snow maybe... I do love a cold Christmas, it's the best.

Probably not San Francisco, though, which I suspect would be chilly and damp and grey, and not that inspiring outside. Far better to look at this ornament and remember riding the cable car to Washington Square and Little Italy on a sunny October day, hanging on tight on the surprisingly steep ups and downs, catching glimpses of the harbour, the Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid.

Not all our ornaments are American: there's a red glass post-horn from Austria, a kookaburra bauble from Australia, a country mailbox from Canada and lots from England where this year there Bing Crosby was probably banned from the airwaves: with the entire country, including the airports, frozen solid and immobile, there can have been very few people genuinely delighted about their white Christmas.

Sucking weather

Apologies to our old friends in England (Ross-on-Wye -2 C today) and our new friends in Washington state (Leavenworth 0 C and snowing), but I've already had enough of this summer weather. It's only around the mid-20s, but it doesn't cool much at night and, what makes it worse, the humidity has been up to 88%, thanks to a tropical airflow. Apparently, while we were feeling cooler than anticipated in Australia 10 days ago, the dew point in Auckland was as high as 21 degrees. Quite how that differs from the humidity percentage, I haven't had the energy to investigate, but La Nina can take her fungal conditions and bog off, as far as I'm concerned. I've sweated enough already.

There are places where you expect this sort of thing, of course. I well remember my father coming home from a trip to Singapore and telling me in astonishment "Even the backs of my fingers were sweating!" Since then, I've been to Singapore myself and many other tropical countries where that damp, limp feeling is the norm year-round; and, in contrast, to the Outback where the fiercely dry heat sucks every bit of moisture out of you. In each case, you end up bathed in sweat and so enervated that it takes all your effort just to raise your wrist in the cause of rehydration.

It's one of life's little ironies that, in places where you physically need cold water to wallow in, there isn't any: in the tropics the sea is bath-warm and not especially refreshing. What's worse, in Australia's Top End it's full of crocodiles anyway. Oh, and sharks and stingers too, in that typically Australian overkill sort of way (viz. the coastal taipan, a snake whose first bite is deadly, but just for good measure is a repeat striker delivering increasing amounts of venom with each subsequent bite).

So, it's hot, humid and appetite-sapping weather, and everyone's buzzing round the shops gathering the necessities for Christmas dinner, which for many traditionalists like us still comprises roast turkey, baked ham, roast vegetables and afterwards steamed pudding. It's a killer - but I wouldn't have it any other way. It's not Christmas if you're not felled to the sofa afterwards with palpitations. Those modern types with their crayfish salads are nothing but wusses. Hot fat and sugar: bring it on!

Great Day for Up!

Good old Dr Seuss: perfectly put. This is such an exciting time, full of promise and enthusiasm and possibilities; and the Firstborn's journey has already begun very well.

It's a horribly long time since I last posed in cap and gown, but my journey's been a good one too: more broad, sunlit uplands than Sloughs of Despond. It's taken me in some very unexpected directions, especially over the last few years, and I hope to have lots more exploration ahead of me yet. Watch this space!

A farewell to Oz

Last day in Melbourne, and it's a beaut: clear sky, hot, sunny and the streets full of Christmas shoppers, talented buskers, wandering tourists and heads-down workers.

We went up the Eureka Tower, all 88 floors, to a splendid view from the SkyDeck over the city, harbour and complicated motorway system that had us amazed that we found our way here at all. There's a thing you can do, standing (or lying) in a glass cube that moves out over mid-air, at which point the opaque glass beneath your feet appears to shatter and leave you standing on nothing 300 metres above the ground. Fun, if not quite as thrilling as promised.

Then to the Australian Centre of the Moving Image, to be affronted that they're claiming The Piano as one of theirs, and both inspired with admiration, and exhausted, by the Disney exhibition. So much cleverness and effort, just to entertain! Like Disneyland itself: amazing and almost immoral. Excellent museum, though: eats time.

Spot of shopping, overwhelmed by so much choice, final theft of McDonald's wifi, and then the boring bit: taxi, bus, plane, car. But home at the end of it all.