Category: Travel

That was nothing like a dame….

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

We’re in France, and staying, as ever, in the middle of nowhere, with limited vocabulary and all sorts of potential hazards to remind us that this is the way to have eventful holidays. No sitting by the pool for us, no siree. Normally when we get here, the grass has reached around the height of a small child, and we regularly lose one as a result for the first couple of days.

Anyway, being the fit family, and having an even fitter family staying with us, no small commotion from this morning as six or seven of us came in from runs and bike rides, with news that there was an injured deer, hit by a car, on the road that runs near to the bottom of the house. There’s another blog to be written about the deer hereabout, and how they are an inspiration for us all to give up running and drive tractors, but that will have to wait for now. In the mean time, there is a deer with a broken neck on the side of the road. Breathing, and looking every inch just like Bambi’s mother.

We didn’t think the gendarmes would be particularly interested in the accident, so decided that the best next step would be to tell Yaside, who runs the Tabac in the nearby village. So off we rushed, with mission in our minds and a french dictionary by our sides.

‘What’s the french for deer?’, said Mrs Emu

So I looked it up – ‘Chevreux’, I said, ‘or Daim, if it’s a female’. Which it was.

Rushed into the Tabac to break the bad news. Now, what we were trying to say was that there was a deer with its neck broken, about 3km down the road, and we weren’t sure what to do. We should have twigged that the questions about whether there were any witnesses or police on the scene weren’t the sort of enquiries that normal French folk make about a dying deer.

Unfortunately, given that Daim looks and sounds a bit like Dame, what Mrs Emu had actually said was that there was a woman 3km up the road with a broken neck, but still breathing. And that if Yaside got a move on he might be able to have it for his dinner.

All of which is a bit embarrassing. I really think we’re fitting in here.

Mind the gap

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

A short observation based on a delightful train journey last weekend, in which we travelled first class from Norwich to Edinburgh for next to nothing, fuelled constantly by smiling rail staff wielding teas and coffees at each stop. lounging back in comfortable seats and enjoying a spot of free wi-fi. I’m not being sarcastic – it was fab.

Anyway, when visiting the train toilet, which was one of those strange Tardis constructions when you’re never really clear whether you’re locked in or not, I noticed that all of the signs were in English and Braille. This was the case for the flush, the tap, the soap…and the baby changing unit.

Now, I don’t quite understand these things, and I’m sure needs must, but under what circumstances on a high speed train would you expect a blind person to use this ?

It’s Good To Be Back (not)

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

I’m not absolutely sure how this current stream of consciousness will end, but a funny thing happened to me while walking through Prague last weekend with Mrs Emu.

I heard a song I couldn’t quite place. Then, the horrible dawning that it was Gary Glitter singing, rather ironically, about wanting me to be in his gang.

So a number of things struck me, all in a very short space of time:
– for a fleeting moment, just before I realised what the song was, I enjoyed it, thinking ‘I’ve not heard this for a while’…
– then very quickly chastised myself for enjoying the work of someone who, let’s face it, is a pretty despicable individual…
– then felt slightly miffed that the person in the shop with the music on hadn’t realised that civilised people just don’t listen to GG any more for very good reason….
– then began to wonder the degree to which we should separate or integrate what we think of people with their artistic output…

Which is where I got a bit stuck. So we just don’t hear anything by the Glitter Band any more , which is kind of understandable, up to the point at which we deny people the pleasure of listening to some fantastic glam rock self-deprecation.

At the other extreme, we listen innocently enough to music that, for all we know, might be being played by Nazi sympathisers, Paedophiles, or…well, actually most other things are pretty ok in Rock n Roll.

Sometimes a terrible dawning hits you like a brick after you’ve been enjoying the music, then you feel obliged to discard, or end up listening to it with an apologetic grimace. To my knowledge, this has happened to me three times in my listening career (Herbert von Karajan, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton, seeing as you ask), and I genuinely find it difficult to listen to those artists any more without thinking of their political or moral views. But I’m probably enjoying listening to output produced by even more extreme individuals without knowing it.

So maybe we should just completely separate the political from the music. But then we wouldn’t have Bessie Smith, Woody Guthrie or Billy Bragg, and the world would be a worse place for that.

So, as I say, I’m stuck in this stream. I rather fear that the answer will be that we should always have an eye on the alignment of the artist’s views, but there’s probably a degree of forgiveness along the madness/genius axis. Which still doesn’t help your correspondant, who ironically has just found himself tapping his feet along to Rockin’ Robin by Michael Jackson…which is a fantastic song that I’d really like to recommend, but…

The luxury of airline travel

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Here is a list of personalities I would rather not sit next to on a packed plane:

1. The horrendously overweight. I have nothing against fat people (actually, that’s a lie, but let’s not digress for now), but I really don’t want to be wedged between them and the window, or have them mould themselves into me in a confined space.

2. People with a colds. I know that you can’t really help having a cold when you have to travel…but you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll be passing it on to at least one of your fellow passengers, particularly now that air con & air flow seems to be a thing of the past on aeroplanes.

3. Members of a hilarious stag party who have decided that fancy dress would be a great way to ingratiate themselves into the Czech Republic.

4. As above, but having decided to start drinking at breakfast.

5. As above, but liberally distributed around the plane on account of being late out of the bar, so keen to keep up their merry/abusive/misogynistic stag party banter across a dozen seat rows.

On my last Sleazyjet flight, I managed to get 5 out of 5. Flying can be a truly unpleasant experience.

More irony

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Greetings from Prague, where it seems that the world of irony has many many forms. Here are two:

1. The Museum of Communism, although well worth a visit for the footage of the velvet revolution alone, is run down and staffed by pretty miserable individuals…and situated directly over a McDonalds

2. One of the most important parts of Prague’s history is the Jewish cemetery. You have to pay to get in.