Monthly Archives: March 2019

Dinner Companions

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The final “assignment” we had to write for the travel writing course was 250 words about “someone I met while travelling”. Juliet and I like to think we have caught the cruising bug and have undertaken several in recent years. You meet all sorts of interesting people on these trips and this is brief piece about one such encounter. I must admit a little bit of fiction has crept in – we did meet the people mentioned but my description of Sue is not 100% accurate in terms of her jewellery.

“Dev Patel is playing Saroo, while Nicole Kidman is playing me”. On a cruise you meet all sorts of people and this cruise was going to be no exception. 

Sue, from Tasmania was one of our table companions one night at dinner along with her husband and two other couples. Dressed casually in a short sleeved dress to reflect the Mediterranean summer her eyes sparkled as she spoke. Neck length hair complimented her choice of clothing. Her keen personality shone through as we chatted about life, families, the usual small talk when meeting people for the first time.

Dinner on a cruise is a chance for the ladies to dress up and wear lots of statement jewellery. However, Sue and indeed the other ladies on our table were minimalist in terms of adornments. Aside from the usual wedding band she wore a simple necklace, however, on her right wrist there was an unusual looking pearl bangle which glistened in the light from the chandeliers in the dining room. Carefully manicured nails with a shade of pale pink completed her look.

Intrigued we waited for Sue to continue. “John and I adopted 2 Indian boys back in the ‘80s. A few years ago Saroo decided to trace his roots in India and was reunited with his birth mother. Astonishingly she had never given up hope of seeing him again even after 25 years”.

“The bangle?”

 “It is from Madhya Pradesh where Saroo was born, a gift from his mother”.

In 2013 Saroo published his book “A Long Way Home” and the subsequent film “Lion” was released in 2016. It later transpired that his Hindi name was actually “Sheru”, which means “Lion”. Here is a link to a short film made by Saroo about how he used Google Maps to locate his birthplace – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXEvZ8B04bE

Down under Adventure

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The next exercise was to write a compelling beginning to a story. My effort centred on the trip Juliet and I made to Australia and New Zealand in 2016.

The trip “Down Under” centred on a 16 night cruise from Sydney to Auckland. We are now in Akaroa on New Zealand’s South Island.

“The penguins are moulting at this time of year,” Shireen our guide informs us. She leads us slowly along the path towards the nesting boxes that are scattered around the hillside. We are on a guided tour with a family run business, Pohatu Penguins, on their farm on Bank’s Peninsula on New Zealand’s South Island. Shireen and her family monitor the largest Little Penguin colony on mainland New Zealand. They can be found at this time of year, January – February, in burrows they have dug out or in man made nesting boxes.

The sea is some way off in the distance which surprises us. Evidently some of the nests we are walking past are up to 700m from the sea and surprisingly 200m up a slope. “When they are not moulting,” Shireen continues “they make the journey to the sea each evening to feed and return around dawn”.

There are characters among the penguins. One was born blind with a deformed flipper so when it has its daily swim it goes around in circles. These are wild penguins and the family see themselves as merely temporary guardians so the likelihood is that this little fellow will sadly have to be put down as it will not survive on its own.

“One very common comment from travellers is, although they have travelled most of the world, Akaroa and Bank’s Peninsula is either the most beautiful or one of the most beautiful destinations they have ever visited.”1

1 Shireen Helps – The Natural Beauty of Bank’s Peninsula – article on website  https://www.newzealand.com/nieuw-zeeland/article/the-natural-beauty-of-banks-peninsula/?&cid=p:sem:UK:FY19:Pure:Google:UK_G_S_DSA_Travel_to_NZ_Canterbury:txt:&kwid=Canterbury&gclid=Cj0KCQiAheXiBRD-ARIsAODSpWOW5FsbBUFobTwZjo4ADp9JZI7WcbJVAmHKZAPQ0DZ8uDGithYUy_gaAou4EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

A place near me

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The next exercise was to describe “a place near me”. Here is my effort.

Steam rises from the frother as the barista prepares the steamed milk for my cappuccino, the hissing sound filling the air around me. My drink is placed on the counter, I pay and take a seat by the window. Cheerful classical music emanates from the hidden speakers dotted around as I take stock of my surroundings. 

Young mums with babes in prams sit in groups discussing the joys of motherhood. Other customers are hunched over their laptops The advent of flexible working means cafes now serve as inexpensive office space. A couple of cups of coffee is a cheap price to pay for somewhere to hold a meeting. What kind of business are they in? No suits, just casually dressed. Maybe every day is a dress down day like it is for me.

Pedestrians scurry past the window wrapped up to ward off the biting cold wind. This is Chipping Norton, one of the highest places in the Cotswolds. The cafe is a refuge from the cold and is extremely popular on days like this and indeed every day. I jokingly refer to it as my “Chipping Norton office”!

I take a tentative sip of my drink. Today it is frothier and more chocolatey than usual, a trainee barista served me, it still tastes good but I end up with a milky moustache. No one notices as I wipe my face. Everyone is either chatting away or studying their laptops or newspapers to pay any attention to my predicament.

Panic on a plane – Part 2

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After writing about our most memorable travel experience our next task was to write 250 words about our reaction to it. At this stage in the course we students had no idea what we had to write about in future weeks as they were embargoed until the Monday morning of each week. Perhaps if I had known what we would have had to write about I might have chosen an entirely different “memorable travel experience”.

Our trip had been organised a year ahead when we read that Azamara, a cruise line we love, was starting cruises in Australasia. It was for a celebration of my 60th birthday and our 30th wedding anniversary that we decided to do this particular cruise. We had therefore been looking forward to leaving a wintery UK in January 2016 to fly to a hot Sydney to meet the cruise ship.

However, a lost passport would mean that no doubt we wouldn’t be allowed to enter Hong Kong in order to change planes for the flight to Sydney and the cruise. As we all know the passport was found and we thoroughly enjoyed our trip seeing parts of Australia and New Zealand.

Perhaps for once I was more emotional about the “misplacing” of the passport that my wife was. Would the trip have to end in Hong Kong with us being sent back home without getting a sniff of Sydney and beyond? As a Scot would the money I had paid for the trip have to be forfeited? Would our travel insurance cover the cost of maybe cancelling our trip at this late stage?

Fortunately we had a wonderful holiday visiting new places and having novel experiences that perhaps only “Down Under” can offer. The “lost” passport was put aside and we relaxed, but it is a good story to bore friends with and perhaps offer a warning to keep all your documentation in a safe place at all times when travelling.

Panic on a Plane

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Earlier this year I enrolled on an online course through Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education. Our tutor set us several tasks over the duration of the course to write short pieces using 250 words or fewer. My efforts will appear in this post and subsequent others.

The first piece we had to write was about our most memorable travel experience. I based mine on the trip Juliet and I did to Australia and New Zealand in January/February 2016.

13th January 2016 arrived. The day my wife and I were setting off on a “trip of a lifetime” to use a well worn metaphor. I’m not superstitious but at least it wasn’t a Friday!

We were off to join a cruise ship in Sydney for a 16 night trip to Auckland, but first we had to get there. As we were going so far we decided to travel Business Class from Heathrow with a brief stop in Hong Kong to change planes. So far so good, great flight, lovely cabin crew who looked after us well, managed to get a bit of sleep on the overnight flight. Just as we were about to gather our things together for leaving the aircraft my wife asked if I had her passport.

A rummage around all her bits and pieces she had with her for the flight and a search amongst my things and no sign of it. A mild panic was beginning to set in. We had 90 minutes between arrival and departure of our connecting flight. Obviously she had it when we boarded as we had to show passports at the gate in London so it was somewhere on the plane. The cabin crew had a look for us, initially with no success, however, one of them scrambled on the floor and looked under the seat in front and turned up trumps. Prior to this I thought that our holiday would be over before it started.

This episode only left us 45 minutes to get off the plane and get to the gate for the connecting flight – but we made it. Apart from this “incident” the holiday lived up to our expectations.

Greetings from Hook Norton

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Over the past week or so I have been revamping my website and decided to adopt a WordPress style for www.davidmcgill.co.uk. Previously this was a site dedicated to my photography which has moved to my other domain name – www.davidmcgill.co.uk.

I hope that readers – if there are any – will find something of interest on this site. There are articles I have written for publication and photographs. Who knows what else will find its way on to this site.