Pale blue dot

Every night I watch the news and every night I shake my head at the new depths that are plumbed by the feckless hoard at Westminster, they who purport to have our best interests at heart. The news this week that Michael Gove thinks we should buy the queen a new boat in a year that has seen cuts that would make Draco himself suck air through his teeth, just illustrates what complete fucking cretins these people are. But why am I surprised? The news is the same now as it was in the bad old days of Thatcher with the miners’s strike and the poll tax riots. Do we succumb to a kind of political amnesia? Maybe it’s just apathy. Whatever the reason we seem to keep putting up with a continuous shower of shite, sometimes we even ask for a sponge. Dead soldiers are still being brought home from a conflict designed wholly to ensure oil companies keep pumping, big business avoids tax of sums that would solve our current financial crisis while the government seem happy to take money from disabled people. The list of injustice carried out in our name gets bigger by the day, when will we decide we’ve had enough? When will we find our line and know that it has been crossed? Maybe when the turkey twirlers run out, till then we’ll just plug ourselves into a reality TV show and presume that someone else will fight the cause for us.

What happened? Is there no hope? Maybe the ants will look after the planet better, it shouldn’t be that long till they get their turn.

Wordpress now on my new iPad. Maybe this will make things a little more user friendly? Who knows?

I’m posting this from my new iPhone, if it works I may re-energise this place.

I’m writing this from my new iPhone

I’ve just noticed it’s three years to the day that I started this blog… spooky.

I haven’t posted for a while. The time between March and now was difficult, but things have turned round and I’ve started another new chapter in my life. I can feel a good few rants coming on so check back soon.

This has been a public service announcement, thank you for your patience.

It looks like I’ve solved the bandwidth issue, a company in Yorkshire was racking up over 600 hits a day on my site. As a result my allowance was used by mid month. I’ve barred the offending IP addresses and it looks to have done the trick. Thieving bastards.

Almost exactly four years ago I was in Prague, wandering the cold snowy streets in search of something to do. I found myself in a little courtyard about half a mile from Wenceslas square, and looking round a few shops I found a little book shop. I expected all the books to be in Czech, and was happily mistaken. I bought a book about a young man who wandered off into the Alaskan wilderness.

The book, by Jon Krakauer, is a true story and despite the sadness of the story, it is still a very uplifting one. Yesterday I watched the film of the book, directed by Sean Penn and staring Emile Hirsch it was better than I had hoped. They made a great job of it and would recommend a look.

IMDB

There are few things better than lying on a beach in the sun, under the shade of a palm tree, reading a good book. In between chapters I quite enjoy people watching, and this is where the Caribbean isn’t as enjoyable as other places I have been. Topless sunbathing makes life difficult for the people watcher; it seemed every direction I looked, filling my field of vision, was all shapes, sizes and ages of naked breast. Apart from ensuring that I can’t gape round the beach like a slack-jawed hillbilly, why would you want to sunbath topless? Come on ladies, I need answers. It’s not like you get them out at Tesco’s on Saturday afternoon, or stretch out butt-nekid in your garden at the first sight of the summer sun. In fact there is a distinct possibility that the only person to see your nicely tanned, nut-brown boobies is your partner. So, why?

Whilst away I read three and a half books. The half was “The cold six thousand” by James Ellroy, set around the time of the Kennedy assassination; it delves into the mob, bent cops and the Hoover era of US politics. It’s heavy going, using very short, punchy sentences and there seems little flow to it, I’m glad I saved it till last. I’ll tell you more when I’ve finished it. The first book I read was “The lost Continent” by Bill Bryson. Bryson makes me laugh out loud with his observations; I get funny looks when I’m reading his books. This one is about his return to the country of his birth a few years after leaving to live in the UK. His mixture of culture, history, observation and musings is the perfect travel book in my opinion. Second was “Ludmilla’s broken English” by DBC Pierre. This a strange story about Russian brides and conjoined twins, along with a sub-plot of war, drugs, Russian mob and secret government departments. The plot lines come together late on, so it’s a little predictable but still highly enjoyable. If you have read Vernon God Little and liked it, you’ll like this. The third was the best in my opinion, “Borders up” by Vitali Vitaliev is another travel book, but one with a difference. He splits Eastern Europe into Beer lands, Wine lands and Spirit lands, he then travels to the individual countries and drinks with his new friends. The book seemed to highlight the differences between pre and post communist Eastern Europe, and even more startling, the very distinct similarities. Fascinating, funny and very enjoyable.

As the warmth of the Caribbean sun is leached from my bones by the frigid air of an English winter, I find myself wondering whether I would go back to the Dominican Republic. The resounding answer is no, not even for the 84 degree heat of mid-winter.

It’s an easy question to ask, but with a complex answer, so if you can be arsed to read the rest of this I suggest you get a brew and make yourself comfy.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the place, the sun was hot, the sea was blue and the sand was like talcum powder but there is a feeling that that’s all there is, no depth to the culture and no sense of national pride from the Dominicans. The whole place was a huge tourist trap, designed to part me from my cash. I know most holiday destinations are similar, but if you engage a Jamaican or Egyptian in conversation about culture or religion you get more, you get passion and colour, and this was sadly lacking here. I have waffled about my opinions on the differences between travel and tourism before so I’ll not go into it again here (here if you’re interested 4th July 1995), but suffice to say that if tourism is all about your destination, then there are far better places in the Caribbean to visit than the Dom’ rep’.

The oldest known inhabitants of the island were the Taino Indians, replacing older tribes around 600 AD, the Tainos named the island Quisqueya, which means “mother of the earth”. The hunter gatherers lived on the island until a little after Columbus landed on the 5th December 1492. By the early 1500s they were all but gone; smallpox, enslavement, suicide and war with Spanish ended their rule of the island. Since then Hispaniola, as Columbus named it, has been in Spanish, French and US control until finally becoming a republic. You would think, with such a rich history, that some of it would filter through to today’s society. Unfortunately I didn’t see it.

Anyway, back to the holiday. You may now be under the impression that we didn’t have a good time. Nothing of the sort, it was a great holiday. We had a good laugh, read some great books, saw some mind boggling things and got a fine tan. All will be revealed in the next few posts.