A world of difference ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a thirtieth birthday present to myself, I bought an airline ticket and took off on a six-month 'Round-the-World' back-packing trip ..

 It began on the sixth of January, 1991 ..

Exactly thirty years on and I'm living in a completely different world, one in which that dream is now an impossibility. No-one can go anywhere, anymore! The Covid pandemic's got us all in its grip, and even poor old STA travel, with whom I booked my ticket, has ceased trading because of it ..

I was going to call this blog 'The opposite of lockdown' because, flying off from Heathrow at the start of that trip, I'd never felt such freedom in my entire life. Today, people can't even step outside their front doors ..

I'm not writing about my trip to show off, I'm simply marking an amazing personal anniversary and thanking my lucky stars I was to be able to fulfill my dream. How fortunate I am to have such fabulous memories ..

Covid is never going to be a fabulous memory for today's thirty year olds. Here's hoping that their world - and ours - will open up again soon .. 

(Ps: If you're interested, this picture was taken in Moorea, the island across from Tahiti. I've always been fascinated by the 'Mutiny on the Bounty', and the inlet on my right is where they shot some of the Anthony Hopkins' film version.)

 

I am in hell ..

"I am in hell .." yelled Fletcher Christian, as he debated whether or not to set Captain Bligh adrift from his ship, The Bounty, during the famous mutiny in 1789. I'll have a bit of a quandary myself this evening, so thank God for TV catch-up. There are two programmes on at 9 o'clock tonight that I'm dying to watch. BBC Four is showing the first in a series of Photography programmes, introduced by ex-picture editor Eamonn McCabe but - dare I say, even more exciting - Channel Four is beginning a series based on The Mutiny on the Bounty - recreating the epic open boat voyage by Bligh and some of his crew across thousands of miles of empty Pacific ocean ..

It's a subject that absolutely fascinates me! I mean, to the extent that I went all the way to Tahiti just to see the 'tropical paradise' that caused half of Bligh's crew to mutiny. (Turns out it's now just a crowded busy island full of French people and crazy motorways. It wouldn't lure me back, let's put it that way!) Anyway, Bligh's skill and bravery at navigating all the way back to Timor - by memory - is something that amazes me, and I hate the Hollywood image of him being a bully and a tyrant. He wasn't. He was just a perfectionist who felt let down when, eventually, his crew couldn't match his high standards. The thing that impresses me most is that, contrary to the common view of a salty old sea-dog, Bligh was actually only 34 years old when he led his men to safety. Incredible!..

Now, being a photography blog, I suppose I need to get back to pictures. Er, well here's a Kodachrome shot from my own epic voyage, when I went round the world for 6 months. Hell? My God, it was Heaven.. 

 

Six months in a leaky boat...

 

I managed to book a hotel right under the flight-path at Heathrow Airport when I went to London last week, which didn't matter until the first of the morning's long-hauls came hurtling over my head at 5.20 in the bloomin' morning and that was my sleep done for the day, thank you very much! Amazing to think how far all those people on board had travelled through the night though, and this is just me getting a little reflective as this weekend marks the 223rd anniversary of 'The Mutiny on the Bounty', and the start of six weeks of hell for another of my heroes, Captain William Bligh. I know that Hollywood didn't do him any favours, but in my book he was one of the bravest, most talented sailors our country ever produced. And do you know how old he was when he was tossed into that jolly boat in the middle of the Pacific? Thirty three! Just 33 and yet he had the experience and knowledge to be able to navigate back to Indonesia, saving the lives of a boat full of men and managing to sketch and map the islands they passed as an aid to future shipping! Man, I'll bet they'd have loved a 777 zipping over their heads!...

Now, remember 1982 and that huge flotilla of our ships heading out to rough up The Argies in The Falklands? It was a bad time all round, and no more so than for one of my favourite bands of all time, Split Enz. I still laugh at the good old BBC for banning their new single ... Six months in a leaky boat!

Weird, eh?...