Me with Mrs Thatcher at Madame Tussaud’s, London. I took my first trip to Europe, including the United Kingdom, from November 1991 – after my final year Law exams – to February 1992 – when I had to start work in a solicitor’s office. Apart from two weeks in Malaysia, this was my first trip…
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Jul
On my first trip overseas, I took an afternoon off from Club Med to visit the Malaysian city of Kuantan. I probably went because a lovely widow I’d befriended was going. In hindsight, looking at myself in a rickshaw, I seem like a relaxed remnant of the British Raj. I don’t think the publicity material…
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Jul
Above is Robert Burns at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, 2014, the month before the Scottish referendum on independence. The description with the picture says: Today, Burns is an icon of Scottish identity. He is shown here as Che Guevara, the heroic Latin American revolutionary. Below is Che Guevara at El Revolucionario Bar, Buenos Aires,…
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Jul
Last year, I performed a show that featured ‘Loving Thatcher’ in the title. It was going to be called My Argentina: Learning Spanish and Loving Mrs Thatcher, but that was 51 characters, including the colon. Fringe World required titles to have no more than 50. I toyed with ‘Loving Ms Thatcher’, but no-one ever called her that,…
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Jul
I’ve previously posted about the highest toilets in Australia. These were the most easterly. Cape Byron, 1997. The following year, I turned down a job around here. I don’t regret that, because the timing was wrong, but I do wonder what’s happening in the parallel universe where I took it. I probably wouldn’t be writing…
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Jun
One night in Argentina, my friend Paula’s cousin asked me about some places in Australia he was thinking of visiting. Uluru? Oops, I hadn’t seen it. (I’d only ever been the Northern Territory once, for five or ten minutes, before Wonder Woman turned up.) The Great Barrier Reef? Sorry, not there either. (Since then, I’ve…
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Jun
If Paula hadn’t asked me to her wedding, I probably never would have gone to Argentina. Nor New Zealand. I met Craig in Buenos Aires in 2007. The following year, said he wanted to take a cruise from Sydney to Auckland, and would I like to come? The basic price for a mid-range cabin on the…
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Jun
This is a typical departure list at Dubai International Airport. Okay, it ‘only’ has cities on five different continents above. There’s no South America, but in January 2013, I passed through Dubai on the way from Perth to Buenos Aires. Hardly the most direct route, but it didn’t cost me that much over $2,000 return. When…
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Jun
