Today’s post is an homage to Robert O’Byrne, The Irish Aesthete. I had the pleasure of meeting Robert in Ireland last weekend; my sister asked him to a merry dinner.
My fishing book does not mention the tarpon I hooked on the Belize River. It kept jumping out of the water and on one of these leaps I lifted the tip of my rod and the dead weight broke the line. It does mention a catch in Ethiopia.
It’s red pin time again. The Owenduff meanders through peat hags in Co Mayo towards the Atlantic. There are clumps of rhododendrons in blossom along its banks. A few scruffy sheep mooch about. The country looks devoid of any human habitation but on inspection there is a sprinkling of small houses.
So long – I’m going west into a Wi-Fi-free area, taking this gadget with me. Just eight inches and with rugged good looks it will turn me into a barista anywhere there is hot water, if Security don’t think it’s a bomb. We meet again towards the end of next week.
Friends have just come back from Jodhpur, known as the Blue City. Another Blue City is Chefchaouen in Morocco. As you know, things often come in threes and the third Blue City is closer to home.
Some years ago, I would need to check an old passport to be more precise, I flew on an airline that had an unfortunate history. In one day in 1968 they lost three Comet 4C’s, two Caravelles, a Boeing 707, and their only Vickers VC10 and Viscount.
I have been at the Cheltenham races this week. The weather was super-sunny and warm on Wednesday – most unusual for the Arctic micro-climate there. The traffic is as well managed as possible in such a rural location, so I choppered in.
Malta has two main indigenous grape varieties: Gellewza (red) and Ghirgentina (white). Not as catchy or easy to pronounce as chardonnay – remember that Oz ad campaign, “say g’day to a chardonnay” that implied Australians at the very least cleaned their teeth in the morning with the stuff.
Churches on Gozo have ornate decoration but, so far as I have seen, no stand-out works of art. That cannot be said of the co-cathedral, St John’s, in Valletta.
The Ġgantija temples stand at the end of the Xagħra plateau in the town of Xagħra on Gozo. Understandably they have been dubbed the Megalithic Temples of Malta for alliteration and ease of pronunciation.