Words About Things

It feels like it has been winter in England for about the last 10 months, the sky is permanently gray and my kitchen is somehow always colder than the inside of the fridge. As I was eating my breakfast in front of the fire wondering if it was worth bothering to open the curtains I saw a clip on the television of Australians celebrating their national day. Personally if I lived in a country where it is always sunny and everybody hangs around on the beach all week (don’t pretend they don’t) I would celebrate every day.

The Australia day celebrations seemed designed to annoy those of us in the northern hemisphere who are in the depths of winter. Footage of people surfing and sunbathing and generally having a great time in the sun are the last thing I want to see in the middle of January. I consoled myself with the thought that it was very unlikely that I would be bitten by any native species in England whereas in Australia at least two thirds of the creatures are deadly.

The newsreader said that one of the events taking place was the ‘Havaianas Thong Challenge’ that disappointingly turned out to be something to do with flip-flops. There was also Vegemite wrestling (in rather than against) and presumably quite a few barbecues taking place.

The Australians certainly seem to have a pretty great lifestyle and if flights to Australia didn’t take so long (a flight to Sydney takes over 22 hours) I would have visited by now. It actually took me longer than that to travel to Florida because we took two flights in order to keep the cost down so perhaps flying to Australia wouldn’t be so bad. I would just worry that once I got there I would be unwilling to get back on the plane and come home.

I found this documentary about the legendary Captain Beefheart on Youtube and wanted to share it here. It was made for the BBC in 1997 and is narrated by the man who introduced me to most of my favorite music: John Peel.
Part one is embeded below and links to the other sections can be found at the end of the post.

Captain Beefheart Documentary part 1
Captain Beefheart Documentary part 2
Captain Beefheart Documentary part 3
Captain Beefheart Documentary part 4
Captain Beefheart Documentary part 5
Captain Beefheart Documentary part 6

This video is quite old but I decided to post it anyway for those who might not have seen it yet. It is filmed in a place in Spain called El Camino Del Rey (The King’s little pathway) which is near Álora in Málaga. The Camino is a a pathway along the edge of a narrow gorge, it was built between 1901 and 1905.

Wikipedia has the details about the Camino:

“In 1901 it became obvious that workers at the hydroelectric power plants at Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls needed a walkway to cross between the falls, to provide for transport of materials, and for the inspection and maintenance of the channel.

The walkway has now gone many years without maintenance, and is in a highly deteriorated and dangerous state. It is one meter (3 feet and 3 inches) in width, and is over 100 meters (350 feet) above the river. Nearly all of the path has no handrail. Some parts of the concrete walkway have completely collapsed and all that is remaining is the steel beam originally in place to hold it up. One can latch onto a modern steel safety-wire to keep from falling, though it can’t hold much weight. Several people have lost their lives on the walkway in recent years; after four people died in two accidents in 1999 and 2000[1], the local government closed the entrances. However, many adventurous tourists still find their way onto the walkway to explore it.”

Since this was written the pathway has been reopened although I’m not sure if it has been restored or not. Either way you wouldn’t catch me up their without being attached to the safety wire, just watching the video makes me feel a little bit sick. Having said that I would love to visit the trail, I have even looked into car hire in Spain and nearby hotels. If I do walk the trail I will film it and post it here although I might have to edit out the sound of me crying in fear…

Sorry about the lack of posts for the last few weeks, I have been having problems with my database and a rather unsympathetic hosting company

Thinks appear to be back to normal now so normal posting will resume in the forthcoming days. To celebrate here is a photo of a baby sloth: