Deep fried retinas

I'll try and break your
retinas, but I'm pretty.

The other day I caught sight of one of those online news photo albums that told me the 25 best places in the world to watch the sunset or something. I was actually looking for a particular news article on the terrorist group, ISIL, but I got distracted by the fucking sunsets.

You go looking for something particular on the world wide webs and then you realise that time has no meaning and you are trapped in an endless loop of fucking sunsets and your brain spins out of control and then the top of your head explodes.  And that usually means you fail to enjoy the rest of your day or the sunset.

So, sunsets.  Pretty, idyllic, the romanticism of it all, yes, yes, but also staring at the sun tends to make you blind, so there's that.  Watching the daily disappearance of the big bright yellow thing into the horizon from a pretty place is supposedly something you are required to do, or you are missing out. YOLO, and all that.

So apparently it's fine to watch the sun set, but staring directly at the sun anytime before sunset can permanently scar your retinas, the area at the back of your eye that is responsible for, you know, vision.  And that would be a regretability.

I'll try and burn your eyeballs out.

Don't look at the sun or you'll go blind.  Aww, it's sunset, everyone look at the sunset.  Big mobs of mixed messages. Life is so confusing sometimes.

The sun doesn't really do close ups, does it? It does its best work, is at its most photogenic - its most photosynthetic? - as a sunset. It's all real pretty and you'll fall in love with it instantly in a serious way until it gets up into your face, and then it's all scary gases and fire and brimstone and 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.

Copernicus also overanalysed the sunset. He was the bloke who stared at it for so long that it eventually dawned on him that the sun wasn't moving at all; we were. And then he went with blind in all of his eyes so that wasn't so great for him.

Apparently the sunlight is very dim at sunset compared to the sunlight at noon so does little damage to your eyes, but why ruin a good yarn.

One flew over the cuckoo's nest

One flew over the cuckoo's nest the other day. That is, Northern Iraq. At least it said so on my onboard flight plan. I was quite chuffed that I was still onboard after flying over Northern Iraq, what with the new war there and everything. I have no idea why Etihad chooses to fly over war zones. Who knows the ways of pilots.

Perhaps if Etihad could perhaps take somewhat less than an hour and a half to load passengers into their tiny seats they wouldn't have to make up time by flying the most direct route over war zones and thus would not need to dehydrate their passengers by flying at 38,000 feet. Just some thoughts for them to ponder.

Looking down, I didn't hate Iraq immediately, which is as much as you could hope for the place. Despite its notoriety, despite its danger, despite its... endlessness, Iraq looks quite beautiful from the air, which is my first and only choice of location for tourism of this region.

From 38,000 feet, around 11.5 kilometres, Iraq resembles a big piece of brown paper that has been scrunched and flattened again. It's a crumpled, arid landscape for miles and miles.

While steadfastly gazing at the barrenness below and at the other jumbos cruising past towards the direction we were coming from I notice a gigantic, jagged mountain capped in snow in the distance, in the middle of the desert.

A snow capped monster in the middle of the desert.  Looked mighty majestic rising up through the clouds. Pretty amazing if you care to think about it.

Turns out it was Mount Ararat in Turkey, one of two in the Mountains of Ararat. It is the place named in the Book of Genesis where Noah's Ark came to rest after the great flood. Noted.

I worked out on Googy Maps that I saw this mountainous stunner from approximately 300-400 kilometres away. It rises nearly 18,000 feet and seems to be located in the very definition of absolutely fucking nowhere.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the mountains were jagged, brown and dusty. While the whole region looks so remote, and it is, nearly every impossibly high mountain range has a tiny village set into its crater or summit, with what looks like a dirt track down the mountain to another slightly larger village at the bottom.

The ones at the bottom have strips of green running through them, and the slightly bigger villages are encircled with a tinge of green.

Fascinating how farmers can irrigate and grow crops and supply for the villages, with some encompassing huge swathes of land.  Sometimes it's good to stop watching House of Cards for a moment and just look out the window.

England's Moronways

I've been cruising the petunia-ridden streets of Englandshire for the past five weeks. It's been great craic, but I'm getting a little weary of cathedrals, castles, palaces and other outstanding old shit. Plus the motorways drive me bat shit crazy. 

So thoughtful of them to put Stonehenge right on the A343.

My exact problem in travelling around Englandworld is that to see A, you must first traverse B.  'A' being some type of exceptional landmark and 'B' being having to drive/take transport to get there. 

And 'B' is mostly just different levels of exasperating, but that's what you get when you pop 60 million lads and folk into a can of spam and label it England. 

I'm sure the English are just doing the best they can with the archaic potholes surrounded by the occasional stretch of flat asphalt that they have been equipped with and for some inexplicable reason call 'roads', but they certainly don't put on a friendly reception to visitors.

People are doing the best they can, said Deepak Chopra. Plus, people are massive idiots, said me. They try to obliterate anything in their path with their heat seeking BMWs, and that's just not cricket.

Not much of a hedge fan.

There are no speed limits on the moronways.  There seems to be a wide range of speed options available on various signposts along the way but these are rarely adhered to, and only at one's discretion.

I believe the object of the race is to double the number you see on the signpost on the side of the racetrack, times it by your favourite number and that will provide you with an appropriate rate of motion for the conditions presented to you.

It would be fine if any of them knew how to drive, park, indicate, merge, overtake, reverse or drive like a fucking normal person, but, alas.

To their credit, the British don't beep their horn at you, no matter what you do to them. Because they're British, and beeping would be terribly impolite. They'll annihilate your car to a diesely pile of rubble, but they are well mannered enough to not beep.

Gloucestershire Sheen

Took a day trip to Gloucestershire today, and tripped over several of its famed Cotswold villages. The tripping was actually quite deliberate, but it still hurts to stub your toe on all that stonework.

Went to Stow on the Wold, Bourton on the Water, the Slaughters (Upper and Lower), Pastrami on Rye, Cheese on the Mold. It was all quite fabulous.

The Cotswolds are in Gloucestershire in England.  You wanna know how many times I've used the word "quaint" in the past few days? This place is so darn quaint I can barely stand it. The english countryside is so pleasingly old fashioned. Although, after a while the cutesy and quaintsy kind of becomes a little claustrophobicy.

Have just popped down the countryside to Bath, which is located in beautiful county Somerset. Bath is a lovely region, but Hitler didn't care about pretty villages replete with petunias. As such, it was bombed quite badly during the war.

I wanted to read a book, The Bath Blitz, before I came to Bath, but I didn't get around to it. It is an account of the 1942 bombings, Hitler's revenge for the British attacking Baltic cities.

Checked into the Best Western Centurion Hotel on the outskirts of the city, which is surprisingly deplete of ancient roman soldiers.  There was one guy checking in at reception, but maybe that's just the way they dress around here.  Who am I to judge, I'm wearing a tartan pant suit.

As far as woop-woop goes, this hotel is definitely in it.  But fortunately we are travelling with Ailish, our Irish navigatory machine, and Merv, our Mercedes Benz hire car, so all is well.

WAGs Palace - Hampton Court

Actually though, can I live here please.

This touristy business is very exhausting. As much as I love to move about, away from the ordinary everyday, I also would love to sleep in my own bed every night. But moving around is how tourism works I'm pretty sure. But you know who else was notorious for not wanting to sleep in his own bed every night? King Henry VIII. Which, in my opinion, wasn't an accident.

I hit up his mansion yesterday -  Hampton Court Palace  - famous for being home away from his 59 other homes and his six WAGs, before he killed half of them because they refused to watch Coronation Street with him.  

The WAG Palace is located on the outskirts of London town in Richmond upon Thames, just a train hop away from central London. I stormed through the gates of the mansion uninvited, in what can only be described as in an aggressive manner, because that's how HVIII would have rolled. He wasn't the kind of man who would calmly walk through a door no matter what.

The King looked a lot like my Uncle Frank, who would not be seen dead in woolen tights, tunics, or pointy elf shoes I am fairly certain, which sounds jarringly like a detail you didn't need to know.

The type of man who won't
undo his top button 

The WAG palace is pleasant enough I suppose, in an understated, restrained Tudor type of way, although it is replete with great ornate ceilings which is most definitely a recipe for disaster. Let's just pause for the poor damn cleaner who has been dusting them every week for the last 500 years...

But not even the grand old King of England had nice loot in the 16th century; it was all muted reds and browns.  Or maybe he just preferred simplicity in his furnishings, and kept complexity for his privy relations; trying to keep the WAGs away from each other sounds much like a fulltime job.

The WAG palace certainly doesn't have the grandeur of Windsor Palace, Buckingham Palace, or Alnwick Castle (yes, the Harry Potter one), all fancy establishments I have traipsed through in recent weeks, but I can tell it has drama but also secrets.

The gardens of the WAG palace are beautiful and expansive, as you'd expect from a monarch who reigned before the global financial crisis and Instagram, when people who lived off the public purse didn't pretend to care if they looked wealthy or ostentatious.

I love England. Look at it.

Although I suppose the King looking strong and powerful could be crucial in retaining the empire. Plus, you didn't want some French upstart with a trim girth stealing your monarch moment.

King Henry of the WAGs was a cad, but probably only engaged in behaviour that was expected of him throughout that whole unpleasant era.  His whole palace reminds me a bit of Kayne West, which is a regretability.

He went through multiple WAGs in his quest to produce a male heir and had a few of his exes beheaded - more angrily than was necessary - in his special beheading room, which he later turned into a trophy room with a pool table.  I imagine each of them almost immediately regretted their nuptials.

Two of his conquests, Anne Boleyn and Kathryn Howard, were in fact murdered in the Tower of London, which is another delightful yet disturbing place to visit full of death and torture but also secrets.

I love England, but the more time I spend here the more I am thankful that I was born in the 20th century.

Mind the Tourist.

Before arriving in London, the delightful capital of my mother country by another mother, one believes one would have benefited from a spot of boot camp, perhaps a style similar to that administered to London's Metropolitan Icecream Police force, to prepare oneself for the discipline and endurance necessary to tackle the crap out of London in summer.

A key part of the lean machine that is London is the underground, or the Tube, as it is affectionately known by those who can find affection for such things as infrastructure. Found deep under the earth, the cheerfully bright red and blue primary colours throughout the city denoting a station crypt below belie its cruel nature.

The Tube can eat you alive if you are daft enough to approach it during peak hour.  I imagine one's initial experience of the peak hour tube monster is akin to some tourists first experience of Bondi Beach.

Despite all the warnings they go out swimming, get caught in the rip and before they know it they have ended up in a place they don't want to be, ie. Brixton. No-one wants that.

The Tube map is the only colourful object to view in London. Despite its glossy appearance and 'I've been vomited on by a unicorn' facade, a sighting of the familiar map across a tube station crowded with deatheaters is a godsend for the many lost tourists who have their happy thoughts sucked out on the Picadilly line.  Although the rainbow-inspired transport bible often creates more confusion than anything else.

During the peak hour brouhaha, you have a split second to choose a tube line and a direction of where you want to end up, because the locals take no prisoners.

For some unfathomable reason, at any time of the day, everyone is in a big bloody rush. Must get somewhere urgently for some unknown reason. And you get dragged into their crazy shit, into the rip of all these commuters, because they want to get home and watch Corrie (Coronation Street; they love it) or get into the queue for the Eye, for the privilege of looking at dirty, grimy London from a different angle.

Eastbound, westbound, red line, yellow line, blue line, black line with purple squiggles, exit here, exit there, stairs, lifts, escalators, more bloody stairs, people using the long white corridors to tune their guitars and voices. They may be on vacation, but tourists are in pain.

London visitors have some of the more pronounced 'tourist face' that I have seen. Much like zombie face, 'tourist face' is not terribly different to the undead. Nothings elicits tourist face quicker than walking around out-of-towner-infused London for a few long hours engaged in typical activities like walking for fucking miles, and such.

Wide eyes, droopy open mouth, feet a draggin', a soft moan can be heard when a staircase of two steps appears before them, avoids sitting on the Tube because it will make it that little bit harder to mind the gap at the end of their journey. All symptomatic of tourist face.

Next time you see a 'tourist face', give them some pennies in empathy of their cause, because nothing cheers up tourists more than fucking pennies, what with their brassiness and usefulness.

Tourism is hard yakka.

Just spent a solid 5 days sightseeing in and around gorgeous London. You can't go a metre in this town without tripping over a crypt of a famous dead guy - literally, in the case of Westminster Abbey - or a South American school group - literally anywhere interesting in London.

I've been starting the day with a Starbucks latte (desperate times and measures) and seemingly the promise of a day filled wth more of the blue stuff and bright yellow thing in the sky.

First things first, which is how first things often works. Today began with a smooth cruise down the Thames, from Westminster to the Tower Bridge, catching the sights of landmarks such as the Shard, the Gherkin, the walkie talkie, distant views of stunning St Paul's and the Tower of London, the latter of which is the only interesting thing down river of Westminster. The rest of the junk on the banks of the Thames looks like it's competing in an ugly building competition.

After spending 20 minutes looking for a loo, we went back up river via the cruise boat and hit the mean streets of the City of Westminster that accommodate the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and pesky pickpocketers.

As is often the case, I was in no mood for pickpocketers. To this end, I hatched a plan to behead anyone who dared bump into me with a plastic fork, part of my three pronged approach - the others being salt and pepper -  in the case of a salad emergency.

Turns out it's a bit difficult to make your way through the moneyshot areas of Westminster without being pushed, prodded, and dragged along with the tourist tide. Yep, Westminster has a rip.

We then popped into the very beautiful Westminster Abbey, the famous 10th century gothic church, to undergo the obligatory tour, which was easy on the London Pass because your fast pass entry guarantees that you don't have to queue with the peasants, and you get a free crypt if you spend more than 100 quid in the giftshop.

The Abbey is where Wills and Kate married in 2011 in an intimate ceremony in front of two billion of their closest friends and family.

Despite the enormity of its ceilings, it actually does feel quite intimate inside.  I didn't realise that the far end of the Abbey is essentially a cemetery, housing the crypts of Henry V, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and many famous poets and writers. So fabulously creepy.

That section of the Abbey sort of resembles one of those TV shows about hoarding, where the occupant can't move in their house without walking into a pile of newspapers or stubbing their toe on the crypt of a dead monarch. And most of them are wearing their "death masks", because that's not creepy at all.

London may not look big on the coffee stained tourist pocket map but it's a bit of a hike to get to the places the tourists congregate, ie the pretty places with oodles of history attached to them.

Not blogging much this trip. Too tired. Tourism is hard. Poor me. I have thoughts and opinions on the Tube, so maybe tomorrow I will catalogue such rivetting things here.