Devonport by Segway

With thanks to Magic Broomstick Segway Tours

No two ways about it: I'm a sucker for a Segway. Today was my ninth ride, as far as I remember - one in Perth, one in Durban, a couple in the US, and the rest here in NZ - and I've only fallen off once (epic bruise!). There was no chance of that this time, as Pauline of Magic Broomstick Tours was very good at indicating all the potential snags and dips that might catch me out.

It was such an easy day - ferry across to Devonport, quick demonstration on a quiet bit of the wharf that I knew what to do, and then we were away, off on a seamless ninety-minute tour that took in the waterfront, North Head's tunnels and gun emplacement, gorgeous villa-filled suburbs, and lots of places I knew nothing about, despite having often been to the suburb.

We passed Elizabeth House, the Wren's base during the war and, not surprisingly, Party Central back then; and then cruised on along Torpedo Bay, stopping often for bits of naval and other history, local gossip and architectural drooling. Devonport is a treasure trove of beautiful old wooden villas, all lovingly restored, surrounded by neat gardens and each worth millions. One, Pauline said, was bought for $5m-plus by an English family who spent another $3m on doing it up and then - just as it was finished - got trapped in the UK by the lockdown. Painful.

We skimmed up North Head - now under iwi control, so get used to hearing it called Maungauiki - to prowl through the hand-dug tunnels where small boys were making the most of the echo-effect. There's a maze of tunnels under the hill, mostly closed to the public and, I was disappointed to hear, none of them seriously thought to be hiding the first two Boeing aircraft ever built. That was a story I was intrigued to hear the beginnings of at the Everton Boeing factory, near Seattle, in 2010, and it would have been such fun if it were true. And it still might be...

Still, the views over the harbour, city and Rangitoto were terrific. Then we scooted back down and along the seafront, to discover a tearooms right over the water that I had no idea existed, past a giraffe in some eccentric lady's garden, paused outside an even more tempting French café that I really must get back to, and then dived into the depths of Devonport's secret suburbs. So much gorgeousness! 

Pauline told me some interesting geology, and we visited Mt Cambria, that I'd never even heard of before, and saw the little museum set up in a disused church. Another must-visit for the future. There was more local gossip - always fun - and then we headed downhill again, pausing under a big pohutukawa where Bertie (should actually be Beatrice) the cockatoo sometimes hangs out, and stopping at Old Albert, a huge Moreton Bay fig tree by the fancy new library - planted way back in 1883. 

Nearby is the band rotunda which, I'd never noticed till Pauline mentioned it, has music notes all around it - the beginning of God Save the Queen. Except, and I only found out later, looking it up, the workmen got the notation order wrong, and the music goes wonky. The first bit is right, though, I was pleased to be able to, er, note.

And then we were back at Windsor Reserve, with its temptingly fun-looking playground, and the old Nothing Happened joke plaque in the ground, and the tour was over and I had to get off. That's the worst thing about a Segway tour, every time. But up till that point, it had been great fun.

Papped!

While I would, naturally, have preferred a better - in fact, any other - angle, it was still a bit of a thrill to see myself on the front page of the NZ Herald* last week. The initial pleased Oh! was, though, immediately erased by a puzzled Huh? For two reasons: my story inside the Travel section was about Waiheke walks, while the photo was of me doing a Segway tour of Devonport back in January to write about for the SST; and I had no recollection of that photo being taken, let alone submitted to the Herald.

The Segway lady had no clue either, so I asked the Herald's Travel editor, who told me, with some surprise since she hadn't (I'm happy to say, given the afore-mentioned angle) recognised me, that it was a stock image randomly taken by one of their staff photographers. Who just happened to be up on North Head at the same time as me. Once she'd said that, I did in fact remember seeing a young man mooching about up there with a big camera as I was gliding around.

So, there's a coincidence for you - and, unlike most of the so-called coincidences I've claimed in this blog, it is an actual, real coincidence and not what is officially termed Frequency Illusion (or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon**). It's cognitive bias - where if, for example, you've just discovered you're pregnant, you suddenly see pregnant women everywhere. They were always there, but it's only now you're one of them that your brain is selectively registering them all. 

The more you travel, the more you notice those places you've visited cropping up in the news, on TV, in conversation and so on - so, being fortunately in that category, that's why I'm always tripping over references to countries, towns, even buildings, that I've been to. It's fun. Even if, sigh, these days it's a bit sad too.

* I would like to disassociate myself completely from that grammatical error in the tagline on the banner.

** While not disputing the phenomenon, I have to note that, having read all the way through the Wikipedia article, I personally cannot find a single link between me and anything to do with Baader-Meinhof. Which is a good thing, of course.

Waiheke whining

Seven! Even I'm impressed. Seven times on a Segway, now - in Sausalito, DC, Durban, Perth, Queenstown, Kaikoura and today Waiheke, with the cleverly-named SegWai. Andrew's been in operation here for two years, but I only noticed him last month, parked with his punters at the gelato stand in Oneroa. So this morning I tagged along, joining two others (who, by what is by now for me a ho-hum sort of coincidence, have also done the DC thing) on a 2-hour, 20km ride around the western tip of Waiheke.

Since we were all veterans, after signing the single-sentence waiver (two PAGES in the US, plus a video) and helmeting up, Andrew checked that we were able to handle the machines, and we set off - off-road. I'd already noted the knobbly tyres, fitted because we would spend over half the time on tracks and the beach. The first bit was up through the bush and along the edge of some of Cable Bay's vineyards, to stop outside their restaurant with its views over the water to the city; and then we popped along to Mudbrick.

It was a bit unnerving, to be bumping along past hazards like potholes and logs, around trees and signs; but it was fun too, much better than gliding meekly along the road. Where it got really good, though, was after Andrew released our inner tortoises by disabling the speed limiter (not everyone gets this: but we weren't beginners, remember) which allowed us to reach the heady speed of 20 km/h. That was pretty exciting, when we were trundling along a stony beach and over rocks, as far as we could go.

It was a bit testing, ducking down to fit underneath a leaning pohutukawa tree, but we all managed it, and even got confident enough afterwards to go no-handed - not just along smooth road, but even over a speed bump. That deserved a reward, so we popped up into the town for a treat from Island Gelato, no doubt (I'm sure!) arousing envy in the breasts of all the boring pedestrians who saw us arrive and then leave again, whining away in single file down the road to return back through the bush to our start at the beach. Good fun!

PS: Just thought I'd mention - these photos, those horizons? No straightening necessary, despite being taken with one hand while in motion on an electronically balanced machine fitted with 5 gyroscopes. On uneven ground. At 20km/h.

Good news is no news - also, probably tempting fate now

I've just written an editorial about how nobody's interested in hearing about your holiday unless it was a disaster. It's true, isn't it? How was your holiday? Lovely. And that's the end of the conversation. None of those supplementary questions I used to coach my kids to ask of their friends' parents when they were playing in their houses, in order to look intelligent/ingratiate themselves. The only people who have the slightest interest in your trip are those who have just been, or are about to go, to the same place, so it's all entirely selfish - especially the first group, who just want to be able to reassure themselves that they had the better time.

Disasters, though. I've had a few - too many, in fact, to fit into 300 words. It was quite fun to recall them. Stand by.

Dislocating my shoulder by jumping off a moving boat in the Norfolk Broads. Falling off a staircase on Waiheke, knocking myself out and breaking my wrist. Tripping and falling down a flight of stone steps at the Red Fort in Delhi, hitting my head (again - explains a lot). Falling into the Tongariro River thirty seconds after setting off on a white-water rafting expedition. Falling over twice on a glacier in Iceland and whacking the same knee each time. Missing the train in Alice Springs and, out of money, having to subsist on a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter for three days till the next one. Getting mugged in Santiago, by having my antique gold chain snatched from my neck from behind by invisible ratbags. Having a man expose himself to me on the street at night in Brisbane as I waited for a bus. Watching my camera cartwheel down a rocky hillside on the Isle of Skye. Dropping a speeding Segway wheel into a pothole in Queenstown and falling off. Being dumped by a wave on Waiheke on two separate occasions and losing my glasses in the surf. Having my husband whisked away by airport authorities and waiting alone for him for a fraught hour and a half in Moscow. Having to wade thigh-deep through freezing water along the flooded Milford Track. Being followed down a tunnel to an underground market in Delhi by a one-legged, long-haired beggar who was just a creepy silhouette against the light. Having the expedition ship I was on shudder to a halt as it ran aground on a rock off Stewart Island. Breaking an arm off my glasses by sleeping on them on a plane and having to wear them like lorgnettes for half a holiday in France. Riding a horse in a bikini (me, not the horse) in South Australia through a shoulder-high thicket of spider webs. Flushing my hire car keys down a public loo in Brisbane, leaving me stranded at night with no money or phone.

There are doubtless more, that I've blotted out of my memory. Still, that's a good enough list to enable shameless name-dropping. Which is what it's all about, really, when you're back from travelling, isn't it? And probably why nobody else (see above) is interested. So what a good thing it is that I'm a travel writer, and get to describe all my trips in great detail, and even get paid [a pittance] for it. Funny, though, isn't it, how there's a call for travel stories in newspapers and magazines, but in person no-one's bothered? Or maybe it's just me...

Black and silver

No news is good news. No, really: all news is bad news, isn't it? Especially this year. It's got so that opening the paper or sitting down to the evening TV bulletin is an exercise in self-punishment. Feeling cheerful? Here, look at this, and watch all the colour drain from your world. Which all makes the idea behind this blog (see upper right) something of a curse: when somewhere pops up for me to make a connection with, it seems it'll damn near always be because of a disaster of some sort. I could almost feel like a sort of Typhoid Mary, if it weren't for the fact that awful things also happen on a regular basis in places with which I haven't even the most tenuous connection.

So, anyway. The latest place to (reluctantly) feature in this increasingly intermittent blog is Kaikoura, currently all over the news here (and even overseas, briefly) because of the 7.5 earthquake that occurred near there just after midnight yesterday. It's a town on the east coast of the South Island, perched between the mountains and the sea, famous for whales and crayfish, and a reliably rewarding stop on the tourist trail. That's why I was there in February, escorting English visitors around the country, though of course I'd been there often before, most recently to do a Mazda 3 review for the company's Zoom-Zoom magazine (which I wrote with such convincing enthusiasm that I subsequently bought one of the cars myself).

On that trip the photographer (Dean MacKenzie - pic above) and I stayed at Hapuku Lodge, a high-end hotel which features five 'tree houses': lovely wood, glass and metal suites perched on 6m high stilts above a stand of manuka trees, with views of both sea and snow-capped mountains, and sumptuously cosy on a chilly spring night, each with a log-burner glowing by the window. Stilts, though? Not such a good partner for a 7.5 [later upgraded to 7.8] that lasted two minutes, I'm thinking. I wonder how that went?

Anyway, the February trip being self-funding, we stayed in a very ordinary motel just outside the town. That was where, being stuck with boring people who don't understand how things are meant to work, I ate my share of our obligatory freshly-cooked crayfish from Nin's Bin. What we should have done was to sit by that classic caravan (pre-dating the food truck phenomenon by many, many years) just metres from the sea, with gulls swooping overhead, the deep blue sea breaking white on the black rocks, and the air clean and clear all the way to Antarctica. That's how you eat crayfish in Kaikoura.

The tsunami threat didn't eventuate, thankfully, but Nin's Bin is probably now somewhat further from the sea than it was, since the sea-bed seems to have lifted up, to the inevitable doom of many fish caught caught by surprise and left flapping in the sunshine. They're not the only creatures to have been stranded: currently, I'm waiting to hear the end of the story of the three Hereford cattle left stuck on a tiny island of paddock high above what's left of the rest of their pasture, cracked and sunken metres below. [UPDATED pic below]

The most astonishing sights, though, are of the road and railway tracks, which squeeze along the edge of the coast, sometimes having to burrow through cliffs, both north and south of the town. Huge landslips have left tonnes of debris over this route - State Highway 1, people - that are going to take months to clear, if they can be cleared at all. They might have to look for an alternative route, though that won't be an easy job either. The Kaikouras are a proper mountain range. [RNZ pic]

Meantime, poor old Kaikoura, once its current bunch of tourists is removed, by helicopter or HMNZS Canterbury, will be left isolated with pretty much no income: the whale- and dolphin-watching businesses, the Segway tour, the restaurants, the souvenir shops, Hapuku Lodge and its inferiors, and all the people who work there, will have no money coming in. Dark days for the people. For the seals, whales and dolphins, though? Maybe the silver lining...

Plus and minus

There will be a lot of people all around New Zealand and the world who couldn't be happier that 2011 is almost at an end. It's been rough, no doubt about that. Shocking natural disasters on an unprecedented scale, terrible things done to innocents by mad and/or bad people, environmental damage caused by stupidity or cupidity, financial suffering... We're all looking forward to putting it behind us (however illogical and arbitrary the idea of year divisions really is).

But it wasn't all bad. My skinny old cat made it through another year - in fact we all did, people, dog, cats, hens, fish and frog. I got to the Bay of Fires finally, after years of trying. The whole family went back to England for the first time ever. I saw Mt Taranaki clear and spectacular, swam with whale sharks and discovered river cruising. The house got a new coat of paint. I spoke French and German to strangers and was understood. NZ won the Rugby World Cup. Happy Feet the emperor penguin was repatriated from Kapiti to the Antarctic. I sold 64 stories, interviewed a Countess and survived two Canyon Swings and a Segway smash.

So, on balance, and from a purely selfish point of view, for me it was better than it was bad. I hope those of you who come here regularly (you know who you are and, thanks to Feedjit, I know where you live - but no more than that, don't be frightened away, come baaaaack!) reach the same conclusion. And if not, that next year's better for you. See you back here then.

The Longest Thursday

So, what else would you do, after a Thursday that lasted 31 hours, pillow to pillow, and included 18 hours in the air, except pootle into Durban on your recovery day to skim along the beachfront on a Segway, swerving around the monkeys?

Just hours before our arrival, it was 42 degrees here and even the locals were drooping and complaining - but then a southerly front arrived and the temperature dropped 20 degrees. The same thing happened on my last visit here, exactly a year ago. They need the rain, but we're hoping for more typical weather when we head inland to the game reserve on Saturday for the conference.

So Friday's been all about fighting sleep patterns and adjusting to Africa again - people walking along the motorway, razor wire and electric fences, paying 'protectors' in the car parks, a housekeeper, a braai. And seeing old friends, smiling faces, flashes of white teeth, bright colours, exotic birds.

It's good to be back. I'm so looking forward to the animals, especially, of course, the rhino - the reason why we're all here.

Every which way but loose, fortunately

Well, I threw myself off a cliff this morning, twice, and now after looking certain death in the face, Lake Wakatipu, the Remarkables, Queenstown look fabulously beautiful and perfect. Oh wait, they do all the time anyway.

The Canyon Swing - 60 metres straight down from a 109m cliff, into a 200m swing - was much more fun than it sounds at first. A literal rush, in fact. I didn't mean to do two, but I'm too biddable for my own good, so whereas first time I tipped backwards in a chair, the second time I went head first from an upside-down dangle. Cool!

And now I'm off for a gentle Segway around the lake, easy as but a tough workout for the grin muscles. Tch, what a job I've got...

UPDATE: Well, that was tempting fate. I  fell, almost literally, at the last fence, a victim of over-confidence as I zoomed the last twenty metres back to the van, at 15kmh along an unsealed road, misjudging a rut - all my own fault. It's going to be a spectacular bruise, though.* And up till then we'd had a wonderful time, whining along the lakeside, through a building, along the lanes and pathways, up a hill and looping through the Gardens past beds of fragrant roses and cheerful groups of people playing frisbee golf in the sunshine, then back past the shingle beach and the ducks. Supercool fun.

Then we took the gondola up Bob's Peak for a couple of goes on the luge, a little gravity go-cart down a concrete track with corners and chicanes: simple but always a winner. And in between we watched the tandem paragliders running down the hill and launching themselves into the air with no drama at all, to spiral gently back down to the bottom - or, for the thrill-seekers, spin fast and sharply over the town.

And then it was time for our Hollyford briefing and then fish and chips on the beach with an eager audience of ducks and seagulls, not too fussy about whether it was a chip or a toe they were pecking at. Lots of people around, all having fun, some of them showing off (young man tight-rope walking across the water between jetties, I'm looking at you - which was exactly what you wanted, of course). Then back to the Hilton by water-taxi to nurse my grazes and pack for tomorrow's early departure into Fiordland. Busy day!

*UPDATE #2: Oh, yes!

Red and bleak

On Tuesday, 22 February, 2011, the Jubilee Clock stopped at 12.51, the moment when Christchurch history split in two. They'd recently restored the clock and tower, erected for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and the gold is still shiny and the stained glass is pretty with the sun shining through it. It was designed by Benjamin Mountfort, who was behind most of the city's best-loved Gothic Revival buildings, including the Museum, what's now the Arts Centre, and of course the Cathedral. The Museum was earthquake-strengthened a while back and came through the shakes pretty well, but most of his other work now looks very sad.

I did three tours today: the first, on an agreeably comfortable bicycle, was through Hagley Park to Dean's Bush and Mona Vale - such a cushy ride, I'd forgotten how easy it is to cycle around a completely flat city, which is also now so bike-friendly. The Saturday market outside the closed Deans homestead is really good, and more popular with the locals than it's ever been because, I was told, "it's outside". On a lovely sunny morning, it was a perfect re-introduction to the city's loveliest features, which are still there and still beautiful.

Then, on the new Red Bus Red Zone tour, the mood was completely changed by the safety warnings at the start ("You might not survive") and the close-up looks at the shattered centre, after passing through checkpoints manned by soldiers. The CBD is probably less dramatic than in the early days when the streets were still lined with rubble, but even now when most of that's been cleared, it's shocking to see the empty spaces. There are facades propped up with shipping containers with nothing behind, cleared spaces swirling with dust, abandoned buildings with USAR codes spray-painted on the doors reporting when they'd been searched for survivors, and lots of piles of shattered brick and concrete where diggers are busy with scoops.

We weren't able to get out of the bus, but when I came back on my very enjoyable Segway tour, though we couldn't get into the Red Zone, we could go right along the fences outside it and get close to the Cathedral. The tower is nearly all gone now, just a stump left - the cross from the top of the spire is in the Museum, where you can actually touch it, which is kind of odd - and the rose window has disappeared, battered into smithereens in the June 13 quake by the metal supports put there to protect it after February. The Cathedral's future is still in doubt, because the (Canadian) bishop thinks it's too expensive to save and has instead committed $4 million to a temporary cardboard substitute; but there's a strong movement pressing for its restoration. I hope they succeed. It was so sad to see it like this:

instead of like this:

1200 people a week can't be wrong

Every time I come to Perth, it's different. Well, not so much since the last time seeing as that was only about a week ago - but otherwise, the city always seems to be reinventing itself. It's not a new thing: many of the original buildings dating from the founding in 1829 were knocked down, as so often elsewhere, in the 1960s, to give precedence to the car. Not one of architecture's finest hours, plenty of those buildings themselves were subsequently demolished too, to pretty much a deafening silence, during the periods of boom that Perth's mining industry has alternated with comparative busts.

Though the price of iron ore has dropped considerably lately, people are still moving here in droves, and there's enough money in the system for another period of building to be going on, and it's impressive. Apart from things like moving roads and railways to return the city to the people, erecting lovely and varied public art works, converting previously neglected heritage buildings and putting up some super-duper new skyscrapers, there's the huge effort going on at Elizabeth Quay.

I saw it today out with Segway Tours WA (just the 7th two-wheeled outing for me, cough) along the riverside: here the river itself is being returned to the city, having been pushed aside, and there's going to be something for everyone there, even the wildlife. Up in the CBD and previously down-at-heel Northbridge, there's already a vibe going on, with laneways tarted up, international street art going on, trendy hideaway bars popping up, lots of restaurants and cafes - but now they'll have a waterfront too, and it'll be popular. They seem to be a sociable lot, these Perth people, and they enjoy being out.

It feels so prosperous here. Gold will do that, of course (you can buy a fancy one-ounce coin at the Perth Mint for around $2700), and diamonds, and uranium and even the currently despised iron ore. But there are other riches in Western Australia too - pearls, for instance, and scenery. They're next on the itinerary, when I fly up to Broome this afternoon to go cruising along the Kimberley coast. There will be blue, and orange, and white (that's the boat), and heat and sunshine, and fish and crocs. Other stuff too. Can't wait.

Nothing happened

Washington DC is a stately city. Stately, neat, distinguished, interesting and handsome - if a little short on the lived-in character that seems to come more easily to cities that aren't capitals (always excepting places like London, Paris and Rome). There's a lot to see, so to whine along the Mall by Segway was a smart idea - as well as, naturally, fun. Also naturally, the American way was exhaustively thorough and indemnifying, compared with the light-hearted and superficial (though perfectly adequate) briefing we got just over a week ago in Durban.

Eventually, however, we got mounted and were whirring along the pavement, stopping at various points of interest, like some of the Smithsonian museums, and in front of the Capitol, before taking the Presidential route of the cycleway along the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. We saw the White House from across a meadow and then stopped at the Lincoln Memorial where Abe sat, dignified and impressive, looking over the Reflecting Pool to the Washington Monument obelisk and the Capitol beyond.

It was a good introduction, necessarily superficial, but fun - and so was the next thing. Today was the last game of the baseball season, between the Washington Nationals and the Miami Marlins. The stadium was awash with red for the local team, over 35,000 people contributing to the friendly, family atmosphere. There were cheerleaders, a bald eagle mascot, titivators with rakes to comb the gravel, and a belting version of the national anthem sung to an audience standing with their hands to their hearts; plus plenty of beer and food, and a Mighty Wurlitzer commentary on the action.

Though baseball is a closed book to me, rounders and softball at school helped a bit, and so did the man sitting next to me, who explained how it was history being made before my eyes. The row of zeroes on the scoreboard to me looked a bit disappointing, but apparently it was a rare thing to see the  away team prevented from scoring any runs at all, and as the ninth innings began the crowd was on its feet willing pitcher Zimmerman to make the record books. Two strikes, then the third pitch connected and the ball soared over the diamond - and dropped straight into the hands of the mid-fielder. It was a joyous moment, the crowd roared with delight, and I understood how nothing could actually be quite something.

Wars and whales

Despite (I know!) not being, like so much of the rest of the world, locked down, isolated or in any way confined to the premises, I have still managed to give due attention to social media. So I have followed the TikTok sea shanty thing right from the first post of Nathan Evans singing solo, through all the fun additions, one by one, to the collective, multinational and very catchy masterpiece it is now.

Though I had heard the Wellerman song before that, I wasn't aware that it is, in fact, local to New Zealand. People have, naturally, done the research and found that the British-born Weller brothers sailed from Sydney to Otago Harbour in 1831 and set up a whaling station there. (Their ship, the Lucy May, was later crewed by Herman Melville.)

The Wellers were the first Europeans in the area, even before Dunedin was founded (by the Scots - Nathan is also Scottish, by the way). They did very well until the whaling industry collapsed in 1840, simply because there weren't any right whales to be found any more. Funny, that.

There's a rock named after the brothers just off the coast right by the road that runs out along the Otago Peninsula, so I have sailed past it, with Azamara, in 2017. Returning to the ship after a railway outing earlier that day along Taieri Gorge, I went into the Maritime Museum at Port Chalmers, alongside where the ship was moored, and had a good nose around. Without a doubt, I would have seen Weller Brothers artefacts there, but was more taken by Shackleton's typewriter and Mark Twain's complaint about the Union Steam Ship Co's Flora: "the boat was the foulest I have ever been in" which made me feel pretty smug about Azamara Journey. I was also fascinated to see a bit of debris from (see below) the Japanese attack on Darwin.

I was also driven past Wellers Rock, again without realising, on my way out to Taiaroa Head and the seal and penguin colonies there, on a TRENZ tour the following year. After our drive through that property, we finished up at the royal albatross colony to coo at the big fluffy chicks, before dutifully admiring the 1886 Armstrong Disappearing Gun at the underground fort there - built because of the fear of, believe it or not, invading Tsarist Russians. 

*cough* Coincidentally, just last week, I popped across the harbour to Devonport for a bit of a Segway, and we went up to North Head to look at the gun emplacement there, also built because of that threat of a Russian invasion in the late 1880s. And *ditto* yesterday, I stood in a similar, but much bigger, gun pit at Stony Batter right here on Waiheke, where in 1948, somewhat tardily, they finished installing a 9.2 inch gun to fire at the Japanese, who really had been poking around NZ during WW2, after the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin in 1942. After a single test firing in 1951, the gun and other equipment were eventually broken up and sold for scrap, and some of the sheet metal was bought by - the Japanese. Who are also, incidentally, one of the few whaling nations left in the world.

So, we've gone from a sea shanty connecting people in many nations, to serious guns installed at huge effort and expense to repel invasions, at a time when the physical borders of many countries are shut tight... it's a funny old world, eh?

Gone to the dogs, and back again

My appreciation of nature on my walk this morning was interrupted by a loud and aggressive poodle running at, and around, me on the beach. Its owner shouted at it from where she was sitting and, getting no response, eventually came over and managed to get it to leave me alone, although despite her orders, it would neither sit nor shut up. "She's friendly, really!" the woman insisted, and took offence when I disagreed, stomping off with the still barking dog in tow.

Of course, the next section of my walk was taken up with mental arguments with the dog-owner, and reassuring myself that my reaction had been reasonable, and that I wasn't being a Karen. Part of my imagined response was listing all the dogs I've owned, known or lived with: some Labradors, a spaniel, several terriers, various mongrels, two Great Danes, a Dobermann and a couple of Rottweilers (the latter two owned by my friend, er, Karen).

And then I remembered the last dog I'd spent time with: Joey, a cute little Italian greyhound cross, who I took for a walk up Runyon Canyon in LA almost exactly a year ago. It was an Airbnb Experience, walking rescue dogs, and it was fun and interesting, and I really enjoyed it, out in the sunshine and fresh(ish) air, with lots of other people around also enjoying the outdoors. It seems so far away now, not just in physical time and space, but in another world. I hope it's not too long before it all comes back again - and not just because then my story about it would finally get printed.

Today at least is a step in the right direction. Excellent news this morning from Washington DC has sent a huge sigh of relief all around the world. And now I must get on with writing about last week's Segway outing...

PS: If you prefer your coincidences more obvious, how about today's Facebook communication (which turns out to be fake, but the fact that it's still so believable speaks volumes) -