‘Are you scared? What was that big bang? This storm is intense!!’ This was a Whatsapp to my husband. That big bang, dear readers, was a huge tree falling in the campsite. This is what happens if you decide to take your family on its first camping trip in Japan during cyclone season.
It’s a question we all ask ourselves. If we could go back, would we? Can we ever have a ‘do over’? For me that ‘do over’ concerned the city of Prague.
Wake up to the German countryside sweeping past, drink a hot cup of coffee, eat a croissant and look out at the world as the sun rises then go out into the hallway and have sociable chats with the other passengers.
I'd forgotten how the places along the way - places that aren't on your bucket list - can turn out to be the most memorable can be. A case in point is Antwerp.
I have long been a proponent that travelling with your partner is the greatest litmus test of your relationship. Indeed, a 2019 survey of 2000 couples revealed one in four of them took a ‘make or break holiday’ in their first three months or sooner.
I can remember the exact moment the travel bug bit me.
‘Antalya? The place where people go for veneers and hair plugs? You know you can get kebabs in Istanbul?’ My husband, not for the first time, is bewildered by my choices.
At this year's Oscars, amid a sea of Barbie feminism dressed in bubblegum pink and Cillian Murphy's architectural bone structure, the two films I was gunning for were Perfect Days, written by Wim Wenders and Takuma Takasakiabout, and Celine Song’s Past Lives, both exploring roads not taken, regret and what it means to choose to live on your own terms.
But tomorrow is World Rare Disease Day and since I refuse to ‘show my stripes for rare diseases’ (wearing stripes is the traditional awareness raising strategy) or wear a funny T-shirt that says, ‘Auto-immune disease: Because the only thing tough enough to kick my ass is myself’, I’m writing this.
This month we’re desperately in need of good news stories. February being the bleakest month, freezing and endless with Spring, let alone Summer, seeming so very, very far away. So, like many folk, I latched onto a recent Herald article about a wonderful Glaswegian Dementia Assistance Dog, Lenny, looking for a home.
