Michael Palin has my dream job. The perfect job. Worse still, he’s pretty much doing everything that I’d want to do, first. So that if I went and did it, it wouldn’t be original anymore.
He gets to travel and write books and produce documentaries of his travels. Around the World in 80 days, Pole to Pole, the Pacific Rim, and the Sahara.
It’s that last one, Sahara, that I’m presently reading. Seems that I’ve been to a few of the places early on in the book, and it’s always interesting reading others’ views of the weird and wonderful places I’ve seen.
I’ve been to Zagora, for example, and even remember that sign. And thinking to myself : “self, it would make a good picture, you sitting in front of it”.
Palin’s gone and stolen that from me as well.
Interesting factoid no. 1: it seems that you can read all of Palin’s books, in their entirety, online. That’s kind of fun. Enlightened, even.
For example, I’m on Day 30. This passage made me chuckle:
Having passed through an enormous country, I find myself in this wide, flat, shapeless capital feeling that I could be anywhere. I remember my colleague Graham Chapman on a Python tour of Canada being asked by a local tourist guide what he thought of Regina, Saskatchewan. Graham looked around at the flat expanse of prairie stretching away in every direction and then enquired, with winning politeness, ‘Why didn’t they put it over there?’.
Regina. Even the name makes me chuckle. A good girl’s name, too. One you’ll never forget, ‘cos it rhymes with a …”
Enough!