On birthdays …

So, once again I have fallen off the blogging wagon. In fairness, I’ve always been more of a reader than a writer. Given the choice each evening of turning on the computer and being creative, or turning to my couch with a good novel … I inevitably choose the latter every time. But I find myself currently sitting at the computer with little to do and so I felt I ought to let you all know I’m still alive and well! I’m off to South Africa again next week, and those of you who read my friend Ger’s blog will know this safari is for a bit of an occasion. Both Ger and I will be celebrating our birthdays, and for me it’s a bit of a milestone being my 40th! So, taking inspiration from Ger’s last post, I’ve been reflecting on past birthdays.

Fell on Black Days …

I’m sure many of you have heard the news in the last 24 hours about the sad death of Chris Cornell, singer and frontman for the band Soundgarden. I heard about it before bed last night, and awoke this morning to hear the verdict of the medical examiner which determined the cause of death as suicide. It’s been weighing on my mind ever since, so I thought I’d try writing about it. 

Zealous Traveller

Drum roll please!! Guess what? We’ve made it to the end of the April 2017 A-Z Blogging Challenge! Phew!! And wasn’t that a whole lot of hard work. But ultimately it’s been a great way to get back into writing and I’ve come across some wonderful new blogs and thoroughly enjoyed catching up with everything I missed from my original blogging friends. So, to Z. I didn’t want to do a specific destination for this post. I was looking back over the posts I’ve written, not just for challenges but in general, and I have to say it’s heavy on the travel. You could say it is a testament to my zeal for discovery. I figured, what better way to end the challenge then than by looking at why I travel.

Ypres …

The observant among you will have noticed this post isn’t headed up “Snapshot – Ypres”. That’s because despite having been to Belgium back in 1996, I didn’t visit the city of Ypres (Or Ieper in French). So why am I writing about it? This city is important in the story of who I am. But for a bullet, fired in 1915, I may not be where I am (or perhaps even who I am) today. This post is about how the trajectory of a life and the generations that follow can turn on the smallest of events.

Xenomania

Okay, so we all know X is probably the most dreaded letter in this A-Z Challenge. Am I right or am I right? Show of hands … who automatically thinks X-Ray and tries to come up with a remotely interesting story about one? Yep. Me too. I got lucky last year (not in that sense, focusing on the writing challenge here people) – I wrote about Xenophobia. Basically it’s a dislike of people from a foreign country and it seemed a valid travel related subject matter. So I figured I’d just flip in around and look at the opposite: Xenomania.

List Lover

I know. I can sense the shock from you when you read that title. This is not the usual travel snapshot, giving you a brief insight into my visit to London or Luxor or someplace equally as wonderful. I fully intended to do that too. Then a couple of days ago I got thinking about all the comments left by my lovely readers and I noticed a reoccurring theme of the bucket list. Which got me thinking about the role of lists in my own everyday life. So … no travel today, just a post on the humble list.

YOLO

I was going to take everyone to a new destination today. I realise I haven’t done many (or should I say, any) posts on my travels in Europe or the USA. I had though Yosemite would be an excellent first post on the States. But alas, as minds often do, my has changed course. I’ve been thinking about that little “word” – YOLO. Now, anyone who has read my post titled On the subject of LOL has probably picked up that I’m not a fan of these acronyms that pop up so frequently. Nevertheless, let’s examine the meaning of YOLO …

Xenophobia

Oh! I can’t tell you how happy I was to find something to write about for the letter X! I won’t lie, it’s been stressing me out. I was all over the place … from x-rays to x-men to “X marks the spot”. Then I was thinking of being cheeky and heading down the road of Xtreme sports or some other misspelling. I have a confession to make though … I even considering kind of cheating.

T is for Travel, but it’s also for Train Wreck …

I’ll be honest, I’ve been really looking forward to writing something for the A-Z Challenge today. It’s time for the letter T. Those of you who have read my blog before will know that I’m an avid traveller. I love it. It’s my greatest passion! So it should be no surprise that Travel, and why I adore it, was to be the subject up for discussion today. That’s right … I said “was”. I’m going on a completely different tangent. In my recent post on Journeys my friend Cheryl, over at Two Brown Feet, commented that she loves to travel by subway. My response was that I avoid trains (or anything resembling a train) like the plague. I’m going to explain why I don’t like trains …

Qantas

So the A-Z Challenge letter of the day is Q. I was very tempted to write one of my usual travel snapshots on Queenstown, the capital of adrenaline sports in New Zealand. Queenstown is beautiful and fun … what a combination! However, I like to include photos with my travel posts and in the case of Queenstown, quite unbelievably, I don’t have any! I was so wrapped up with the bungy-jumping and white water rafting that I just didn’t think to take the camera out 🙂

Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I had been that started with Q. And then it struck me … how do I get to all these wonderful places around the world? Well, coming