I spent a few days before Christmas with Kit in the shop in Lancaster. Strangely lying on a filthy mattress on the floor with an escaped rat gnawing and scrappling away just below my ear I slept the best sleep I have had for almost a year. It was perhaps the illusion of safety and belonging that comes from such situations and is not found in a soft bed or a clean room. This is after all how most human beings live.
I took Kit to Liverpool and spent a pleasant Christmas and Boxing Day, despite feeling unwell most of the time. Back in NuL I am trying to summon the energy to complete the paperwork from my courses and sort out my holiday.
Because I had booked a non-refundable one way flight to KL intending to go off and work in Cambodia when I got my new job I asked the WEA to delay the start and allow me to take a holiday. I have managed to find a cheap return flight and now need to sort out what I will do once in KL.
I have always wanted to visit Burma and now seems to be the time to do it. I may take an Air Asia connection and hop over to Rangoon for a few days. Just enough to see the Shwedagon and Pagan. I would dearly like to have gone to see Brooke on her island off Sulawesi but it turned out to be too expensive and would have taken too long to get there.
Christmas can be a lonely affair, especially when other people are around. Now Kit is grown up and my parents are dead I think that apart from seeing Kit I would prefer to spend the holiday period on my own simply relaxing and allowing myself some special indulgences.
One change to Christmas that seems to have crept up almost unnoticed is the end of Christmas TV. No one chooses what to watch online and television concentrates only on bland or vulgar mass market programmes Strictly Come Dancing, Sherlock, Eastenders, Downton Abbey and so on. Though I have to admit I did watch a bit of both Downton Abbey and Eastenders. At one point I left the room and when I came back the channel had been changed. It took several minutes for me to realise. There was one hilarious moment in Eastenders when a huge tough bruiser of a man cried out, 'I don't need any of you, I have my cat!'
I was rather touched my this until a while later I found out that his wife's name was Cat. This ended my Christmas TV viewing. I shall watch The African Queen again online. That's real Xmas TV!
I did watch an interesting and very depressing Al Jezeera report on the 1965 massacre in Indonesia. Only those interested in modern Indonesian history and the darker side of human nature need follow the link.
Now I have used this blog as I so often do, as a way of getting myself moving, and will make coffee and check flights to Burma.
Unfortunately I notice The Guardian has chosen Burma as one of its top travel destinations. Perhaps the best way to ruin a place apart from Agent Orange.
On the whole I think I prefer the company of Daily Mail readers. They now seem slightly more to the left and somewhat more liberal than the Guardians.
But there is very little difference nowadays.
If I need a newspaper then there is The Jakarta Globe, with ace investigative journalist Brooke Nolan.
Now I must move fast.
There is the guinea pig mystery to investigate and the possibility of some snake hunting in Pagan.
I took Kit to Liverpool and spent a pleasant Christmas and Boxing Day, despite feeling unwell most of the time. Back in NuL I am trying to summon the energy to complete the paperwork from my courses and sort out my holiday.
Because I had booked a non-refundable one way flight to KL intending to go off and work in Cambodia when I got my new job I asked the WEA to delay the start and allow me to take a holiday. I have managed to find a cheap return flight and now need to sort out what I will do once in KL.
I have always wanted to visit Burma and now seems to be the time to do it. I may take an Air Asia connection and hop over to Rangoon for a few days. Just enough to see the Shwedagon and Pagan. I would dearly like to have gone to see Brooke on her island off Sulawesi but it turned out to be too expensive and would have taken too long to get there.
Christmas can be a lonely affair, especially when other people are around. Now Kit is grown up and my parents are dead I think that apart from seeing Kit I would prefer to spend the holiday period on my own simply relaxing and allowing myself some special indulgences.
One change to Christmas that seems to have crept up almost unnoticed is the end of Christmas TV. No one chooses what to watch online and television concentrates only on bland or vulgar mass market programmes Strictly Come Dancing, Sherlock, Eastenders, Downton Abbey and so on. Though I have to admit I did watch a bit of both Downton Abbey and Eastenders. At one point I left the room and when I came back the channel had been changed. It took several minutes for me to realise. There was one hilarious moment in Eastenders when a huge tough bruiser of a man cried out, 'I don't need any of you, I have my cat!'
I was rather touched my this until a while later I found out that his wife's name was Cat. This ended my Christmas TV viewing. I shall watch The African Queen again online. That's real Xmas TV!
I did watch an interesting and very depressing Al Jezeera report on the 1965 massacre in Indonesia. Only those interested in modern Indonesian history and the darker side of human nature need follow the link.
Now I have used this blog as I so often do, as a way of getting myself moving, and will make coffee and check flights to Burma.
Unfortunately I notice The Guardian has chosen Burma as one of its top travel destinations. Perhaps the best way to ruin a place apart from Agent Orange.
On the whole I think I prefer the company of Daily Mail readers. They now seem slightly more to the left and somewhat more liberal than the Guardians.
But there is very little difference nowadays.
If I need a newspaper then there is The Jakarta Globe, with ace investigative journalist Brooke Nolan.
Now I must move fast.
There is the guinea pig mystery to investigate and the possibility of some snake hunting in Pagan.