Last year I started to write a review of Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller”. I read it while we were in Germany for Christmas. We’d visited Bremen and also undergone the bizarreness of Christmas in another language - the same motifs played out in different words and different customs. I’d tried to write the review in a similar structure to the book but, in a testament to Calvino’s writing I couldn’t pull it off.

Five years ago I set out at 3am for Heathrow airport to catch the early morning flight to Madrid. There I connected with a flight to Quito in Ecuador. The previous days and weeks had been fraught with worry about whether I was doing the right thing. Did I get the right vaccinations? Would I have enough money? Would I cope with all that travel? Was I coming back? What was I going to do with all my stuff?

“The Overstory” by Richard Powers piqued my interest among the novels shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And once again the book that interested me most did not win. One year I will succeed in my prediction! I found “The Overstory” an enjoyable read. Its accessibility surprised me. Often people view Booker nominated novels as stuffy or over-intellectual. This novel however is a genuine page turner, full of emotion and heartbreak, not to mention plenty of science and awe of the natural world.

For our first anniversary we decided to exhange books. What better way to celebrate a paper anniversary? Ingrid bought me the entire Foundation saga, most of which were reissued in fancy new paperback designs by Mike Topping in 2016. All save for 1993’s Forward The Foundation that is, but Ingrid got me a copy anyway. Hence, here is a new series of blog posts! The Foundation novels detail a galactic empire in decline.

“Hillbilly Elegy” is the autobiography of JD Vance, a self-professed hillbilly made good who graduated from Yale Law School. I read it because reviews touted it as illustrating the economic conditions leading to Brexit and the implausible election of Donald Trump. As I wrote in an earlier post, I’m keen to learn about why Brexit happened. However, I think this book fails to provide an explanation. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book.

As much as I hate to write about writing, especially when I write so infrequently, I feel I need to reboot this blog. I wrote so few posts in recent months I considered giving up altogether. I’ve been stressed. Sometimes this manifests in being unable to sleep. Sometimes it manifests in all my interests and ideas seeming to be completely pointless. Sometimes one of those precedes the other. Sometimes it works vice versa.

As a wedding present, Ingrid’s Mum Maria kindly took us for a trip along The Great Ocean Road, the longest war memorial in the world. Stretching 151 miles from Torquay (not that one!) to Allansford, the road was deliberately built as a tourist attraction as a means of providing meaningful work for troops returning home from the First World War. Regarded as one of the world’s greatest scenic roads, it certainly holds it own against things like the roads I experienced in Chile and Bolivia when I travelled over the Andes.

On our second full day in Australia we went shopping in central Melbourne, before Ingrid’s mum Maria picked us up ahead of our trip along the Great Ocean Road. We took the metro into the city. I always love watching the fabric of cities knit itself together around train lines and Melbourne is no exception. Along the way, Ingrid had plenty of stories to tell about the various places she had lived.

On our first full day in Melbourne we took it easy. It was warm and sunny, so different to the weather we’d left behind! Ingrid needed more time than me to sleep off her jet-lag. I sat in the sunshine and read the book I’d ignored on the plane. An easy read, it drew me into its characters. I’ll post a review later, perhaps after I have read the sequel.

It seemed to last forever but we made it. We left for Heathrow at 6AM and left London at around midday. I waved goodbye to home for nearly four weeks. We stopped over in Dubai for an hour or so while the plane refuelled. We walked in circles trying to shake off the fatigue. I’d equalled one of my longest ever flights just getting to Dubai and now I was facing almost twice as much time again.

Not being much of a drinker, I’ve never felt the need to do dry January. Also Ingrid and I sat in a restaurant in Barcelona on January 2nd drinking for the third night in row. We hadn’t got off to that great a start. Well today marks the completion of a dry month: dry January with a two day lag. I also (mostly) managed to keep to my other goal of eliminating sugar from my tea and coffee.

This year promises to be exciting so this week I tried to buy a diary. One of those day-to-a-page affairs for scribbling down all the things I’ve seen and learned about. I thought they might be cheap now the calendar is turning to February. No such luck. There were a few week-to-view diaries going for half price in Waterstones but nothing suitable for my needs. I have lots of Field Notes notebooks if my urge to write gets too much to resist.

Ingrid and I renewed our Cineworld passes as it is the season to go to the movies and check out the Oscar contenders. You nod along sagely while dreaming up superlatives to show how much you agree with the taste-makers. Or you can call such-and-such movie a pretentious load of crap. With “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, it’s more the former. But I don’t have to say anything pretentious about the cinematography or its timeliness.

For new year Ingrid and I met up with Ingrid’s friend Ros at Barcelona airport. We went from there to Cadaqués on the Costa Brava. A winding drive over steep hills leads you down to a cute bay with the typical white houses and terracotta roofs. All the window frames were painted just the right shade of blue. The surrealist artist Salvador Dalí lived and worked in the area. This meant a trip to Figueres to see his Theatre-Museum and on new year’s eve a walk over the hill to Port Lligat to visit his house.