News from here and there

What to do about people who make comments on your blog?

I'm not sure I have the answer but I will say one thing if the person making the comment, is sensible enough, to leave their name and some way of contacting them then I can make a decision about whether or not to publish their comment.

Recently I received a comment from someone calling themselves ' Sarah '. Alas this person did not believe some form of forwarding address or some means of being able to reply to their comment other than to do so on my own blog. This is exactly what I'm doing however what I would prefer to do in future is to be able to find out who the person is that is making comments to me and be in a position to read their blog and make a comment back to them about their content.

Catching up on the news, we have just had a visit from two old friends from work.

I cannot believe the stories they have been telling us. They are both retired from the public service. They now live in Queensland and have purchased the necessary equipment to engage in the joyous pursuit of happiness through caravanning across Australia.

We have been regaled with the story of the recent trouble across the Canning Stock Route which goes from one side of Australia to the other. I cannot believe what they have been telling us.

Imagine if you will, that there are four or five people driving their four-wheel drives, presumably without their caravans or caravans that are built for off-road conditions, across some of the worst roads or tracks of Australia. The story we have been told involves corrugated roads extending for hundreds of miles where you are in touch with the rest of the world only through a satellite phone or occasionally if you are near a settlement by means of a mobile phone. We have heard about bolts shearing, tyres going flat, fuel tanks rupturing, bull bars being torn off, sweat, heat, sand, bushes earmarked as toilet pits, all this amid glorious scenery and wonderful tourist delights.

It is difficult to know what to believe, whether our friends are seriously insane or just revisiting their childhood when they talk about their adventures. I think they're really trying to recapture some of their youth and frankly I think they are doing a very good job.

What I find difficult to believe is how anyone can tolerate these kind of conditions for six weeks or more without going crazy. I suppose the answer lies in the nature of the relationship amongst the people we are talking about. If you are deeply in love and have come to accept all of the good bad and the ugly characteristics of your partner then you could perhaps survive these weeks of torturous travel or at the least what I would call torturous travel.

Not to be derogatory about the wilds of Australia, but I am more likely to travel with my partner in the sumptuous comfort of a camper van in France or Austria or Germany, indeed any place in Europe. Alas even these delights no longer tempt me thanks to the ongoing progress of my illness.

I am delighted to be able to report however, that I have done these journeys in earlier days and have benefited from them by adding some basic language skills from some of the countries that I visited.

Only today I was reminded that there were new words that I have learnt from my partner in life that have benefited our travels in many ways.

I have a story of our travel in Turkey that perhaps others may find of interest. Imagine if you will getting out of your hotel and being surrounded by (usually) young children with their hands out asking for money or in a market otherwise known as a 'shouk' where it is the vendors at their stalls asking you loudly and forcibly to buy something.

After several days of this pestering, one gets to the stage of wanting to find a means of not being pestered. In my case, the trick was to speak in Hungarian to those who asked me for money accompanied by an offer to buy some of their products if they could understand the language that I was speaking.

I managed to get away with this trick in most places, but not in Turkey. In Turkey one vendor at least be will able to speak the language, in my case this vendor just happened to be a silversmith.

The lesson learnt was to keep the big mouth shut or buy my beloved a nice present.