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And so it came to pass..

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For a week I have been partially submerged having a quite unique and incredible time which explains the lack of literary outpourings. Did I have pre conceived ideas? Well yes, but being an Australian adding the adjectival description ‘open water’ ie in the sea, to the noun ‘swimming’ provoked more anxiety than exhilaration. So let me clarify out the beginning that there are NO sharks in the Ionan Sea let alone the Mediterranean Sea. At no stage did I have a sense that lurking 5 fathoms deep was a great white about to shoot up like a Polaris missile and devour me. Actually not true because on the 5 km swim between Islands, I was like Saint Thomas- of the doubting personality. If there was one minor disappointment, which I can’t blame on the Big Blue Swim it was rather a lack of wild life in the water. I commented to the crew who confirmed that the local waters are quite probably overfished. 

The organisation was superb and the it was not just the fact that one has swum 25km in 5 day, not an onerous task for me as those in the know would know. We were all sent a suggested swimming programme starting several months before we arrived. This was to say the least, potentially off putting so much so the one could have been forgiven for assuming that we were all to be smothered in Vaseline and herded into the Sea for a swim between Greece and Africa with lunch at Crete. It was not to be although the Vaseline was on hand and I willingly offered my cracks and crevices. 

So do not be dissuaded by the pre swim programme. Seriously we were joined by a delightful American as I described in an earlier blog with an unusual arthritic condition which has left him with elbow joints fused to 90 degrees of flexion and marked disuse atrophy of his upper limbs. Despite this he completed all legs of the week by breaststroke even the 5 km in the allotted time of 2.5 hours. An Olympian effort. His guide was Jax  a delightful giggling English woman who was the most provocative and we were equal at thigh wrestling.

The sea was crystal clear and a constant 28 degrees. The only wildlife were the occasional orange coloured jelly fish. Given again my Australian perception that all sea creatures if they don’t eat you alive, have a poisonous sting that makes curare a mere flea bite, I did find myself constantly looking out for these monstrous marine creatures which through my goggles registered as the size of dinner plates but in reality were button sized.

So the Big Blue Swim is not just the swimming. Those of you who have enjoyed our European cycle holidays know that it is not all about the bike, although PJM would disagree as is his nature. Rather it is the whole day of breakfast, the ride, the scenery, the long lunches ( as long as one find a little local restaurant that is open and not closed for siesta) and the evening at our destination with the social intercourse. So it is with this Swim Adventure, it was the leisurely swims and they were leisurely, with the lunch each day at a delightful Island village and the local taverna. I am completely relaxed and have some would say a somewhat unhealthy tan! I feel smugly healthy. Alcohol has rarely passed my lips. 

As I sit here at breakfast on our last morning together we are trying to create a swimming equivalent of the cycle peleton… Any suggestions? I can reassure Pamela that if she joins me next year for a swim around Crete I promise not to come up, unannounced on her inside leg.

Our leaders and guides were great fun yet professional, protective and at times provocative. Michael K was the chief and responsible for the pink team, of which I was a member of course and I get to keep my cap! Noah of the Ark fame a laconic tanned smooth skinned guide was responsible for herding the largest group, the orange people, who seemed to us to meander this way and that as though they were on recreational drugs. 

The pink team was of course the A team. We were all straight as a die in our strokes. On our last day we swam part way round an island that was purchased by a wealthy Russian! If by chance one swam inside a line of red bouys that marked the no-go zone,there was the threat of attack as several vicious rottweilers wearing flippers and water-wings dog paddle towards us. 
Our last night was at a taverna on the hillside above the bay with a typical Greek barbecue a memorable finish to the week 

pics of our last evening taverna

  
   
   
And for those who are wondering, yes I am practising, when convenient 

  

I told you it was loud!

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Mere Mortals – Dr Oliver Sacks.

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As i sit in the oppressive heat that is summer in Turkey, I learn of the death of Dr Oliver Sacks from disseminated melanoma aged 82. A brilliant communicator who also happened to be an unconventional neurologist.He was a very handsome man, a bikie and champion weightlifter. He described himself as celibate but in his last book, “On the Move” he is open about his homosexuality and the joy of meeting a partner in his mid 70’s. Although I never had the privilege of meeting him, readers will surely undertand it when I say that as a neurologist and openly gay man, I have lost a fellow traveller along the yellow brick road.

Less than 12 months ago, the world also lost Robin Williams, the actor and comedian who portrayed Oliver Sacks in the film “Awakenings”. This was based on the book of the same name by Oliver Sacks in which he described the miraculous response to Levodopa of patients who had survived the great influenza pandemic of 1918 (The Spanish Flu) and subsequently developed severe features of Parkinsons Disease.
There are several remarkable coincidences between these two gifted men. Sacks experimented with LSD and other recreational drugs in the 1950s, describing the consequences in one of his first books “Hallucinations”. Robin Williams took his own life and at autopsy had features of Lewy Body dementia, a progressive neurological degenerative disease presenting in a Parkinsons like manner and with unsettlimg hallucinations.

The Villa Konak 

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The start of this trip has been the most protracted of all my adventures. The totals are as follows: 

in the air 18 hours

in transit 8 hours

car from Izmir to Kusadasi 1 hour

So this, my room in Kusadasi, was a welcome relief.
 
However my dozing off at 6 pm after a shower, was rudely disrupted by the Muslim Muzak, from the minaret 100 metres away and Allah be praised because it happened again at 5:30am… Dr Kiley can complain all she likes about my iPod being heard through the brick walls of a tourist shack on the coast… Catholics have acute hearing  

At the Izmir airport the baggage carousel has an Emirates poster showing a sexy 30s something man in smart casual business gear collecting his Gucci luggage with the slogan 

“Emirates – Hello tomorrow”…prescient should ones luggage go missing in transit! 

The Turkish Border Protection unit need lessons from Prime Minister Abbott. My man at the counter managed to take my passport, scan it, stamp it and pass it back with out taking his eyes off his iPhone!

Some women are push overs?

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The uncollected baggage at the Izmir Airport. Its the day before the World Congress on “Controversies in Birth Control and the Burka in a modern Muslim Society.” I am told this is held strategically and uniquely every 9 months.   

Baroque in Brazil

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About 3 months ago I took to using BING as my default search engine. Google has gurgled down the drain. Each day, there is a changing background picture and today when I went to the BING home page, there before my eyes was the unique Baroque Teatro Municipal Ouro Preto.I have been there!

Here is the picture on BING

Teatro Municipal Ouro Preto

Here are pictures taken by me of this wonderful performing space. I have trodden the floor boards and performed a soliloquy on the very stage , in the manner of Shakespeare: “I’m a Little Teapot Short and Stout…”

I’m a little teapot….

The Royal Academy of Music

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The Academy was founded in 1822 and is the oldest musical conservatoire in Britain. It is devoted to educating and training some of the world’s greatest musicians. The museum is an outstanding and fascinating collection for anyone with an interest in music. It has had bequeathed some remarkable and unique collections including those of Sir Arthur Sullivan and Yehudi Menuhin. The original score for ‘Three Little Maids from School’ is showcased as is a picture of an adolescent Menuhin with Sir Edward Elgar – of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ fame.

The inaugural Professor of Singing was one Manuel Garcia, also the longest serving from 1848 to 1895. He taught Jenny Lind. In fact she was Swedish and as a soprano was world renowned, known as the ‘Swedish Nightingale’. She was self  taught  and blessed with a natural talent, but without guidance had a vocal breakdown. Apparently her vocal cords were severely scared.  She was taken under the wing of Professor Garcia who as a consequence of his insight and talent, invented the first laryngoscope all the more to peer down Ms Lind’s throat. So the laryngoscope was not originally a medical device but rather a sort of musical instrument, usurped by the medical profession, skillfully played by them to make millions.  Apparently Hans Christian Anderson fell hopelessly in love with Ms Lind. The Danish writer,  I had a preconceived notion that he was a bit of a fairy, wrote children’s tales. Obviously I got this around the wrong way?
The founding Principal of the Music school was one William Crutch. A child prodigy himself he took under his wing gifted children from age 10 to 15 and mandated that they all boarded. A typical school day was from 7am to 9pm each day beginning  and ending with prayers. I shall send a memo to the Hon Christopher Pyne MP Minister for Education suggesting, respectfully of course, that he could consider and adopt this regimen. Rumour has it that Mr Pyne already practices this and is indeed at work from 7 am to 9pm and as well is on his knees on a daily basis. If only I could somehow weave Mr Crutch, the teacher, into my memo.
The Museum has two floors of priceless musical instruments, one floor devoted to string and one to the piano family, which is of course technically part of the string family, by string I mean the violin, viola, cello and lute etc. There is a Stradivari violin played by Queen Marie Antoinette. I guess she was the French equivalent of the Emperor Nero who fiddled whilst Rome burnt. Marie Antoinette on the other hand fiddled whilst the peasants ate cake.
The piano section had amongst other things a polygonal virginal.The juxtaposition of these two words absolutely stumped me.
The museum has a changing  temporary exhibition and at present it is a delightful nostalgic look at the Music of the First World War. The songs of the era and sheet music were cleverly displayed and there is no doubt in my mind of the delicious inneundo and double entendre of some of the songs.
Here are some pictures of what I mean.
 

So what do the bad boys love?

  

 

More than he bargained for I will wager

Two days in Cambridge 

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High Noon Farm Cambridge

I had made contact with Richard Fenner, who had lived in my home and rented the front bedroom 20 years ago! He met Mark, his eventual partner from Melbourne, a lawyer. Quite soon Mark accepted a job in London, so they migrated and have lived as landed gentry for 20 years with several vintage ( or classic) cars and a VERY large Belgian Sheepdog. The sort that is as huge as a horse, with a bass baritone bark and an endearing tendency to place its salivating mouth, circumferentially around one’s forearm. 
Richard graciously invited me to spend a few days with them and so I accepted the offer as it was in the general direction of London, my final destination before heading home to Adelaide.
I flew with EasyJet from Edinburgh to Stanstedt Airport, near Cambridge and also part of the several airports that serve Greater London. It is about 35 or 40 km from London and is the base for the “cheap” airlines such as EasyJet and Ryan Air. It was much cheaper to fly than take the train!  The Thomas Cook agent who made the booking earnestly recommended that I be at Edinburgh Airport 2 hours before the flight! I expressed my disbelieve as a seasoned traveller. So I was awake and on the first tram to the airport from Edinburgh to the Airport leaving the city at 5:35 am.     The airport was a seething mass! Checking in was a breeze and as efficient and as quick as in Australia with the self service options and I printed out a luggage ticket, having paid and extra 12 pounds …. But what did appear to be a potential hiccup and slow the process down, was “security clearance”. The queue stretched for miles, however we moved rather rapidly! The gate closed 30 minutes before the flight and this is not negotiable. Indeed despite the pandemonium, we departed 10 minutes ahead of schedule! Unheard of in Australia. The flight was FULL as well. The Scottish lass turned to her laddie on the stairs ( no flight bridge) and commented on how mild the weather was! I attempted to turn around and make a sarcastic comment but the saliva had frozen my lips together.
Richard collected me from the airport around 9am the we drove to their delightful country home outside the village of Withersfield. Mark had gone for a cycle ride, he is a keen triathlon competitor. After lunch, Richard drove me at breakneck speed in a beautiful BENTLEY all leather and walnut veener around several historial villages in the region, including the spectacular historial town of Lavenham.
On Monday 2 couples joined them for lunch, Easter Monday. They are all members of the Vintage Car Club and we gathered aound the Phantom Rolls Royce. Richard created the archetypal  British “Sunday Roast”  with Yorkshire Pudding and the a very rich Bread and Butter Pudding for dessert.
Pictures of the various villages that we visited are below.
 

The Guildhall at Lavenham with Richard

 

The Real Estate Agent office at Lavenham

  

The village square Lavenham

      

The Village of Finchingham through which the Tour de Framce rode in 2014

    

The church in the village of Withersfield

    

The church at Clare