At least in Egypt there’d been food and drink, decent living accommodation. I scrape the flight.Īt first, the children of Israel weren’t happy, not happy at all. She hands me the bag and I race off, nerves crackling through my entire frame like an allergic reaction.
She waves this aside – they get up at 6 o’clock anyway. What’s the point of apology? I apologise. If the word idiot and accompanying coarse epithet stepped lightly onto his lip as to a springboard, he hustled it back, reassured me, and, half an hour later, Therese drives up. Dithering with misery, I fumble with the phone by the feeble light of the sentry box at the entrance to the car park and call the friends with whom I’m staying. I’m in bad trouble and dash back to the car park exit…maybe my ride will still be there. As I trot along the walkway through the car park, past other passengers wheeling trolleys, a sudden flashback: I see the musette in which I’ve stowed passport, tickets, book, notebook, pens, spectacle cases, lying by the side of the bed I vacated an hour ago. I get out of the car, shoulder my rucksack and set off for the terminal, another glimmering force of light. The queue of taxis outside the airport car park is long, tail- and head-lights glow in the darkness. I’m heading for Lalibela to see the sunken churches. Rucksack in the boot, off we go along the empty roads of the sleeping city, street lights shine aloft like fairground lanterns. The guard shows me out through the gate, the taxi’s waiting. I get up at 5am, wash, shave, make a cup of coffee, eat a banana and preen myself on being ready for the taxi at 5.30. Remember, you’re dealing with humans, we all make mistakes.’Ģ2 February, Bole airport, Addis Ababa, 6am. Having asked him whether I can collect all the tickets at one station he says: ‘Sure you can, but check’em through. Go joyously, Sid, in whatever Elysian fields you romp,Īfter an hour’s consultation with the man from Amtrak, I put the phone down and reflect in some bemusement what I’ve signed up to: Raleigh (North Carolina) to Charlotte, on to New Orleans, Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington DC and back to Raleigh, all but LA new to me, visiting a number of friends en route. You paid with affection, and that we all need. It was more fun than telling him he was a good boy. A lucky (possibly) dip.įor Sid, the lurcher, to whom I used to give elementary maths lessons. The blog is long but please look on it as a text to dip into. And I have, this day (22 October 2020) just included a ghost story written yesterday and finished today. I note trips here and there, book reviews, a few poems, photographs, chatter about this and that, cabbages and kings sort of thing, unconsidered trifles, amusing, I hope, diverting, always, casual and off-beam, certainly, motley subjects to entertain. There is no dear diary here, no record of feelings, other than a fairly steady theme of mockery, of stupefaction at the twaddle our so-called leaders come out with, the mess they are making, the ballyhoo and bollocks. Gradually the filling of the diary picked up and, latterly, I’ve added my greetings to the blank page more regularly. It was more a form of limbering up, maintaining the discipline of writing when there seemed to be little writing going on. The early entries are widely spaced, I never had the intention of marking each day.
In 2016, I began to keep an intermittent diary.