I am such stuff as dreams are made on

Nothing is forever.  I know that, you know that, we all know that.  Life is all about change and transformation, metamorphosis in its many forms!  I was once Clio the Muse on Wikipedia.  I awoke almost four years ago here as Ana the Imp.  But now I am breaking free of that chrysalis.  It’s time for me to dry my wings and fly away.  There are great changes coming in my life.  Most important of all I’m expecting a little imp!  At one time this is not something I thought I would welcome.  But now I do, a new challenge, my own offering to the future.  I have so much to think about and so much to do, new foundations to put down.  I just want to thank everyone who has contributed here, friends old and new.  Goodbye and good fortune to you all. 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Come with me to the Kasbah

Tunis by night

Well, I’m back!

I came, I saw, I was captivated.  There really is so much to captivate one in Tunisia, a marvellous place with some marvellous sights and even more marvellous people.  It’s certainly true that the country has not quite recovered from the Jasmine Revolution which saw the overthrow last year of the Ben Ali dictatorship, but overall I thought the place more relaxed and less tense than Egypt. 

There was no evidence at all of the recent fuss over The Innocence of Muslims, apart from the fact that in the whole time I was there I came across not a single American, something quite unique in my experience. 

I did go to Carthage, virtually the first place we made for soon after settling in to Tunis.  I wasn’t completely disappointed, having been forewarned by others that it was all a bit of an anti-climax.  The sites are scattered and there is really not that much to see anymore of a city consumed by a city consumed by a city.  The best part, in the sense of being most complete, was the remains of baths dating to the reign of Antoninus Pius. 

But the most compelling part, for me anyway, was on Byrsa Hill, the heart of Punic Carthage.  Here it was possible to see the fragments left after the systematic destruction of 146BC, an act of vindictive savagery on the part of Rome.  I thought of Hannibal as I saw the scorch marks on walls from all those centuries ago.  Traces in time; I suppose in the end that’s what it all comes down to. 

Carthage is poignant enough but there are far better survivals from the past.  Later we visited the wonderful amphitheatre at El Jem, just as impressive as the Coliseum in Rome.  It’s a testament in stone to the vanished wealth, prestige and power of the Roman province of Africa. 

Equally impressive – much more so than Carthage – are the remains at Sbeitla, a town to the south-west of the city of Kairouan.  This was the ancient settlement of Sufetula, were history is layered upon history, from pagan Rome to Christian Byzantium.  The forum is a joy to behold, with temples side by side to Juno, Jupiter and Minerva, the trinity of the ancient world. 

As usual I’m rushing ahead, carried away by my enthusiasm, mindful that I cannot possibly include all I saw and did in a manageable blog.  It wasn’t all the past, believe me: there were plenty of excursions into the present for swimming and shopping and generally lazing about.  The seaside town of Hammamet on the Cape Bon Peninsula has a gorgeous beach.  Here we lunched on olives, cheese, dates and figs, all washed down with some delightful Tunisian rosé wine.  Rosé is not normally my wine of choice but it’s highly favoured among the locals, so we were assured by Kemel, our ever dependable guide.  Well, when in Tunisia do as the Tunisians do! 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention my encounter in the city of Sousse.  Here most of the people in my party went off to visit the souk in the heart of the old Medina.  Not in the mood for endless bargaining, I wandered off to have a look at the Kasbah, the early medieval fortress, from the outside.  It was really a measure of how safe I felt.  The men, although solicitous, were not quite as bothersome as those in Egypt.  However, as I was standing and staring, one came up and asked if I would like a tour of the Kasbah.  “Come with me to ze Kasbah” – now my life is complete! 

That same day Kemel took us not to the Kasbah but to the city of Monastir, the birthplace of Habib Bourguiba, the first president and founding father of modern Tunisia.  His memory continues to be revered; Kemel certainly revered a man he described as the George Washington or Mahatma Gandhi of Tunisia. 

It’s certainly true, up to a point, though I did not think it politic to challenge our guide’s enthusiasm or question Bourguiba’s more dubious legacy.  The simple fact is that he was a decent and modernising leader who created a bad system.  Presidents for life are just not a very good idea; for the Bourguibas of this Arab world have a tendency to turn into Ben Alis. 

Incidentally, the golden statue of the founding father as a schoolboy, located right in the centre of Monastir, is positively the tackiest memorial I think I have ever seen, all the more distasteful in that the school he attended was demolished to make way for its presence. 

Where to now?  Oh, yes, come with me to the oasis of Tozeur, from there to the great salt lake at Chott el Jerid, with mirages dancing on the horizon, and ever onwards to the Atlas mountains and the sweeping sand dunes of the Sahara.  We did it all, on journeys that took us within an inch of the Algerian border, well, several hundred meters anyway, as close to this dangerous outpost as I ever want to get. 

On the way south we also passed through the city of Kairouan, the first capital of Islamic Tunisia and the location of the historic Great Mosque.  The city, so I was told, is the third holiest place in the Islamic world, after Mecca and Medina. 

One of my more memorable excursions in the south was on the Red Lizard Train from Metlaoui and Redeyef, a journey over a section the Atlas Mountains through some breathtaking gorges.

But this trip was memorable for another reason altogether. In the ticket office I happened to see two men lying prostrate on thin mats, as if waiting in terminal boredom for the next train.  I really only glanced at them from the side of my eye, paying them no mind.  I only found out later from our guide that they were on hunger strike.

This was the beginning of the second week in October.  They had started their particular protest at the end of September, sustaining themselves with a mixture of water and sugar.  What was the reason for their action?  Simply that their fathers had worked for the railway company and this somehow bestowed on them a similar right.  They wanted jobs where no jobs exist.  Apparently their action was reported with some sympathy in the press, though it’s really no more than a kind of moral blackmail.  I can imagine how popular hunger strikes would become if somehow jobs were found. 

I have no wish to sound unsympathetic.  Unemployment is personal tragedy and a moral evil, all the more tragic in Tunisia where there is no system of public welfare.  But I see this as a kind of metaphor, a living example of the country’s dilemma, the reason why the Arab Revolution was always foredoomed to failure, at least in its wilder expectations.  Hopes, sad to say, have a tendency to fall faster than rain. 

I’m straying too far into politics in what I intended chiefly as a travel report.  So back to travel it is, back to one of the highlights of my whole safari – surfing on the dunes of the desert!  The whole thing was such fun, a convoy of 4x4s, driving sometimes at crazy angles or up and down the biggest sand hills I have ever seen. 

Have you ever seen Ice Cold in Alex, the old war film starring John Mills?  If so you may remember the scene where in the process of trying to get the ambulance up the side of the Qattara Depression in Egypt there was a moment when it slipped back down to the bottom.  The jeep just in front of ours made it almost to the top of a particularly large dune, only to reverse back down to take the whole thing again.  Ice Cold in Alex, I thought! 

We made it to the top alright but one of the people in our group went into a complete panic when she saw the descent before us.  She had to be walked down while I urged the driver on.  “We will do it”, I said, “We will get to the bottom, Inshallah.”  We did, well, obviously!  God willed it. 

For me the most romantic part of this adventure was the stop at Onk Jemal – the Camel Head Rock.  It was here, in a desert camp, that Count Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) met Katherine Clifton (Kirsten Scott Thomas) for the first time in the 1996 film The English Patient.  A depiction of doomed love, it really broke my heart when I was saw it in my teens.  It was super to stand there and dream.  For the boys another movie location, Star Wars, was not too far away! 

Romance and dreams and dates and deserts and wine and Kasbahs in the sun, this was my time in timeless Tunisia.  

To Carthage I go

I take the Golden Road

Dear readers, this will be the last article for a bit.  I leave for Tunisia this coming Sunday and will be away for just over three weeks.  I’m so looking forward to it, my third trip to North Africa, following Egypt last year and Morocco a few years before.

I simply love to travel; it’s in my blood.  We had some wonderful vacations when I was a child, visiting quite a few unusual places.  I’ve continued this family tradition. The more unusual the destination the better I like it.  I’m not a travel snob, though; I’m as capable as most other people of doing touristy things and visiting touristy places.  I like to be pampered and I’m most assuredly not into any form of asceticism or personal hardship.  I go for pleasure, not for penance! 

Having said that, I do sometimes feel that I was born too late, at a time when the world gets smaller by the day; a time when all the great adventures are past; when all the trails are blazed and all the paths found.  I would simply loved to have been alive in the great age of exploration, which for me is the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when the maps were being filled out. 

Have you heard of Gertrude Bell?  She is a particular heroine of mine: the first woman down from Oxford with a degree in Modern History; an independent scholar, an archaeologist, and expert in several Middle Eastern languages, a writer, a political specialist, a traveller; a friend of sheiks and kings - the female Lawrence of Arabia!

In 1900 she dressed herself as a Bedouin man, riding alone into the dangerous Hauran Plain, still under the control of the Ottomans, in search of the Druze, a militant Muslim sect, which had been fighting the Turks for two hundred years. She made contact with Yahya Beg, king of the Druze, and conversed with him in his own language. Some weeks after he was to ask another visitor to his domain 'Have you seen a queen travelling?'

I’m no queen; I’m just a footloose English girl, going where the fancy takes me, hoping to understand other people and other cultures just a little better; hoping at the same time to understand myself a little better, my mind deeper, my horizons broader.

Why Tunisia, you may wonder?  In part because I have a fascination with past cultures, with the history of a country that once contained Carthage, the realm of Queen Dido, more completely lost than mere time would suggest.  I will be there, among the fragments and those later left by Rome, fragments upon fragments, traces upon traces.  Perhaps I shall find Dido, with Aeneas by her side. (I saw Anna Karenina this afternoon.  My present mood is fey and romantic!)

But my African adventure is deeper.  It will take me from Tunis and Carthage in the north to the oasis of Tozeur in the far south-west.  From there I’m off into the Sahara and also to see the great salt lake of Chott el Jerid, with mirages dancing in the sun! 

OK, there is a slight concern going to a Muslim country at this time, a time when things are so unsettled, a time when Tunisia itself is unsettled.  But I was in Cairo last November, leaving just before the latest round of trouble started on Tahrir Square.  If one worried about danger one would never travel at all.  Besides life is all risk and I am a fatalist, a jolly one at that.  I shall, in my own way, spread as much peace and light as I can…and keep my golden locks well tucked under a headscarf.

So, that’s it.  My next piece shall be a postcard from Tunisia.  

Olympus to the Olympics

Summer has made an overdue appearance and of all places in Scotland!  The last few days have been jolly decent, warm and sunny.  I came up to Edinburgh chiefly for the Catherine the Great exhibition but I also arranged with some friends to walk part of the West Highland Way over the weekend.  And we did, not the whole thing, which can take several days, leaving from just north of Glasgow, but from Bridge of Orchy to Fort William and then back south by train.  It’s by far the most interesting part of the route. 

I’ve walked the Way before, in whole and in part.  When the weather is good the walking is very, very good and when it is bad it is horrid!  I once crossed Rannoch Moor in the wind and the rain, not a pleasant experience, I assure you.  But Rannoch Moor itself, when one can see and appreciate it properly, is really lovely, a wilderness but a beautiful one, the colours changing all the time as the clouds speed across the heather.  I managed to see some red deer, though quite a distance away. 

Out of Rannoch and on to the King’s House Hotel for a welcome supper and even more welcome drinks.  We stayed here overnight, as I have on several occasions in the past.  I love the place. It’s by no means luxurious but the inn, one of the oldest in Scotland, is bags full of atmosphere.  Our fellow guests were walkers and climbers, people who really know how to have a good time! 

I did have a good time, unlike poor Dorothy Wordsworth, the sister of the poet, who came this way in 1803, later recording her disapproval in her Journal;

Never did I see such a miserable, such wretched place, – long rooms with ranges of beds, no other furniture except benches, or perhaps one or two crazy chairs, the floors far dirtier than an ordinary house could be if it were never washed. With length of time the fire was kindled and after another hour of waiting, supper came, a shoulder of mutton so hard that it was impossible to chew the little flesh that might have been scraped off the bone. 

The only thing that could have made her stay any worse would have been a visit from the Wicked Witch of the West!  All I can say is that a lot has changed since Dorothy’s day.  The food was good with – thank goodness – not a trace of mutton on the varied menu. 

So, up we got reasonably early on Saturday morning for the onward trek to Kinlochleven.  The first stage took us to the eastern entrance to Glencoe, one of the most beautiful and sombre settings in the whole of the Highlands, a dark and brooding nature looking into a dark and brooding history.  We didn’t go in to the Glen itself, there wasn’t enough time.  Instead it was straight up the Devil’s Staircase, a zigzag path cutting its way up the hillside. Given that name by British soldiers, it forms part of an old military road network created by General Wade in the early eighteenth century in the aftermath of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. 

Incidentally, if you ever stay in Glencoe I would recommend the old Clachaig Inn, just as bags full of atmosphere as the King's House.  There is a sign on the door saying No Hawkers or Campbells, a nod in the direction of the infamous Massacre of February, 1692, when part of the local branch of Clan Donald was murdered in the night by soldiers from the Earl of Argyll’s Regiment of Foot.  This was actually a formation in the British Army acting under orders, but the event has traditionally been placed in the context of more ancient clan rivalries.  For all the sad history it really is a lovely spot.  I can assure you that the interdict on Campbells is not taken seriously.  I should know; my boyfriend is one! 

What a remarkable view there is from the top of the Devil’s Staircase, making the climb so worthwhile, with open vistas across mountains, valleys and hills in all directions.  Here, sitting on the heather, we had our picnic lunch.  I lunched and was lunched upon, with clouds of midges descending to feast.  How on earth do they manage when I’m not here?!  The midge, if you don’t know, is a Scottish cousin of the mosquito, all the more ferocious because they are pack hunters and a lot less diffident in their relentless attacks. 

The climb to the top of the Devil’s Staircase was enjoyable; the descent to Kinlochleven the very devil.  The path is mostly loose scree, lots of broken rock fragments, which becomes really wearing on the legs after a bit.  Kinlochleven is a pleasant village right at the head of Loch Leven, a salt water lake which cuts well in from the coast.  Here we stayed overnight in the old Mamore Hunting Lodge, with me too bushed to do much more than eat and sleep. 

The road goes ever onwards.  After breakfast we ascended above Kinlochleven, then directly along the path all the way to Fort William.  I refreshed my water bottle once above the line of habitation, pure, cold water from a stream flowing down from the hill above, the drink of the gods, water like you’ve never tasted in your life, cold and sweet, not at all like the kind of thing sold in supermarkets. 

Fort William is a charming little town with one of the best fish restaurants in Scotland but, alas, we had no time to stand and stare and eat out; it was on to the train and back to a wet Edinburgh afternoon.  And so here I am, refreshed, tired and exhilarated.  Oh, and in a much better mood than Dorothy Wordsworth. Tomorrow morning I leave for London, the place from whence I came, down from Olympus into the Olympics.  My mood is set to change for the worse!  

The Times of My Life – a Letter to a Friend

Seymour,

Thank you for your lengthy message on Facebook, a response to my review of Dominic Sandbrook’s Season’s in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979, a follow up to the comments you made here.  Before I proceed I would urge you to read this book, the basis, I feel sure, for future exchanges. 

But you are going abroad.  It’s a big book.  You may not have the time or the inclination to read it all.  If so, please just borrow it from the library.  Go straight to Chapter 31, that headed Rats on the Town.  Once you’ve read it I would ask you to address yourself to one simple question: do you really, really think things are just as bad now? 

Anyway, as I said to in response to your comment here, there is no fundamental disagreement between us.  All the faults that you can see I can see also.  My goodness, I’ve written about them often enough; I’ve written about our indebtedness, I’ve written about the awfulness of state education, I’ve written about a judiciary corrupted by alien legislation and alien concepts of law, I’ve written about the problem of mass immigration, I’ve written about the corrosive and malign effects of political correctness, I’ve written about the moral abasement of welfare, I’ve written about a lot more besides.  It would simply be too wearisome, and burdensome, to point you in the direction of all of the relevant articles. 

But these are my green and salad days; this is my life, this is my time; I do not and cannot live by politics and cultural despair alone, much as I admire the work of Oswald Spengler.  Like my parents then, there is a whole different dimension to my life now, personal things which I do not write about by and large on a blog that is chiefly about politics and literature.  Yes, I can see storms ahead, but, unlike so many others, I have ways out.  I’m more or less determined to leave England if Labour returns to office and Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minister, which I believe will mark a fresh low for our nation (not my emigration but that moron in high office!)

Sandbrook’s account, though he deals with culture, focuses principally on politics, and the politics of the mid-1970s seem to me to be absolutely dire, yes, in so many ways far worse than they are today.  The incompetence of the Labour administration of the time seems stunning, even more stunning than the incompetence of our present Coalition.

Here was a government captive to union power in the way that no government, not even that of Blair and Brown, has been since.  Here was a government that presided over unprecedented levels of inflation, stagnation and decline.  Here was a government that, in its cap-in-hand approach to the International Monetary Fund, took this country to the most shameful depths in its history.  How are the mighty fallen, not even in the midst of barrel.

You clearly have a longer perspective in history than I do; you can make comparisons that I can’t, though I can’t place you exactly.  You say that the 1970s was the time just before you and your friends arrived.  Is this a reference to age, or to a change of location?  Forgive me, but I assumed you were older.  Are you, like me, a child of the 80s? 

I grew up in a time of flux and transition, we all did, all of us who were born then.  Time accelerates. I don’t suppose there was really that much difference between the England of, say, 1920 and that of 1940.  But then we moved gradually into hyper speed. 

You are right - the Britain of the late 1930s is wholly different from the Britain of the late 1970s.  The old certainties had gone; the old sense of cohesion, cultural and ethnic, was going fast.  Who could ever believe from the empty glory of 1945 (yes, despite the triumphs, it was empty) we would descend to the rubbish and rats of 1979, to forms of appeasement that would have shamed Chamberlain? 

But we recovered.  Margaret Thatcher brought us back from a brink, albeit temporarily perhaps.  Her betrayal in 1990 was one of the shabbiest acts in Conservative Party history, an appalling Ides of March, when the old Heathites and the new Europhiles combined in political assassination.  It’s taken decades to recover from the curse of that year.  The Party laboured mightily and brought forth...brought forth what exactly?  Why, the heir to Blair. 

Yes, we probably are more left wing now than we used to be, certainly more left wing than the days of Thatcher, though not as madly left wing as the days of Wilson and Callaghan.  Tony Benn, that old ogre, comes across as politically if not actually clinically insane. 

When I said that I had a natural optimism I really meant the natural optimism of youth.  I was twenty-six at the end of June; I have my whole life ahead; I simply have to have my own seasons in the sun, just as my parents did before me. The various abuses and absurdities I write about here don’t depress me.  Rather they make me angry, and my response in anger is sardonic humour, the empty cry of Cassandra.

I have nothing to say about Future English, as you put it, because I simply cannot see any obvious solutions to our manifold problems.  I begin to despise this present Coalition Government as much as I despised the last Labour administration; I despise all shabbiness and moral compromise. 

We may have slightly different perspectives over the various issues I’ve touched on but there is no reason at all why we cannot share views and have the kind of stimulating discussions that you are looking for.  I am nothing if not intellectually and politically versatile.  

My apologies for wittering on at such inordinate length.  

Ana, one of life's poor players.  

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing

Through a Glass Lightly

For Tony and Angie and everyone else on the Broo editorial team.

I enjoy writing for BrooWaha.  The Wikipedia article describes it as an “online citizen’s newspaper with a focus on local news.”  That seems rather odd to me.  After all, what is ‘local news’ in the age of the internet?  The briefest of glances will show you that the ‘news’ it reports (actually most of the articles are not news at all) is from here, there and everywhere. Perhaps the world itself is now local.  Our neighbours are all on the moon!   

My own articles cover just about anything that engages my interest.  I’ve been contributing for over a year now, usually three times a week, and in that period I’ve had over a hundred and fifty articles published, the latest another bash at scientology in my regular Tuesday Letters from Ana column (Scientology Child, 10 July).  There is some overlap with Ana the Imp, when I feel it is appropriate, but a goodly number have not been published here or anywhere else.

It’s been an interesting experience for me, an amateur virtual journalist.  Actually my contributions are less journalism, in the sense of hot reports, and more opinion pieces, features and reflections, the kind of thing I specialise in, often with an acidy angle.  Hey, it’s my speciality, a piquant prose sauce! 

I do try to pick up fresh news items, the sort of thing that the BrooWaha audience might not have come across elsewhere in the mainstream media.    A recent report of mine on a live worm being removed from the eye of an Indian pensioner has proved particularly popular, popular enough to have reached the number one spot in the Most Read Articles.  (Worm Found Live in an Eye, 1 July) 

I think I have a feel now for the audience and the sort of thing that is likely to appeal.  Most readers and contributors, though not all, are from the Anglo-Saxon sphere, and of that sphere my assumption is that most are North Americans.  Any decent writer has to reach out their audience, to understand what is likely to swim and what is just as likely to sink. 

I now know that I cannot make my pieces too local or too weighty.  Still, the audience can be unpredictable.  Articles that I thought might only carry a minority interest have climbed high in the readership stakes.  The thing is never to talk down or condescend to people.  I always treat my readers with the same respect, my style not varying at all from the light-hearted to the serious.  I believe I could write with equal ease for the Sun or the Telegraph.  I make no assumption and do I take things for granted; explanation is offered where explanation is needed.  All that matters is clarity.  Good prose is like a window pane, George Orwell wrote, something that I always have in mind.  

A Dream within a Dream

It was my birthday yesterday.  I’ve now completed the first year of my second quarter century.  My goodness, I’m getting old!  I had a great time, so much so that I’ve still not fully recovered.  This is just a brief post to thank people for the numerous messages I got, directly, by email or on Facebook.  There are so many that it would take me at least a week to thank everyone personally.  You know how valued you all are, how important you are to me. 

I’m now twenty-six; I have at last attained the age of reason!  Not so Ana the Imp; she is only three years old, but, my goodness, what a path she has travelled in such a brief time.  I look back over past milestones with a sense of achievement.  I had something to say and I think I’ve said it reasonably well, in my own direct, caustic and inimitable fashion. 

I would like to thank all past contributors, those who have taken the time and made the effort to add their own views.  I hate censorship so I publish almost everything, agree with me or not.  In fact I really do not mind disagreement.  What I will not and cannot publish is direct attacks on myself or other contributors.  Oh, yes, I have had them aplenty, including death threats from PETA animal rights fanatics – these have come after blogs about hunting and fur.  I’ve had people denouncing to me as an imperialist, a Nazi, a fascist, a gay basher, blah de blah de blah.  One even called me an Illinois Nazi.  Illinois?  Your guess is as good as mine! 

Yes, I admit to my own prejudices – I simply can’t stand the ignorant, the stupid and the second rate.  I suppose I did these people a favour in not publishing, in that their incoherent and spluttering words said so much more about them than about me. 

It’s all been great fun.  I write because I have to and because there are things that have to be said.  I rather see myself as a Donna Quixote, tilting fruitlessly, perhaps, at the windmills of modern life, the giants of ignorance with which we are all beset.  I owe my outspokenness in large measure to my parents and grandparents, my father’s father in particular, who taught me that silence is simply not an option.  I could never have lived in places like Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany, places where silence offered the only refuge.  I speak, I write, therefore I am. 

So, on we go.  The cycles get faster; time moves inexorably forward.  I think I may very well be entering a new state of existence, that the chrysalis is set to open once more.  I was Clio the Muse, I am Ana the Imp.  Soon I may be something else altogether. 

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? 

Daria and I

If you were a cartoon character, who would you be?  This is a question I addressed myself to recently.  I did not have to hesitate before answering.  There is only one choice for me – Daria!  Daria, if you’ve never heard her, is the eponymous heroine of an American animated television series created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn for MTV. The series focuses on Daria Morgendorffer, a smart, acerbic, and slightly misanthropic teenage girl who examines the world with dry, cynical humour.

Running over several series at the turn of the century, it was my favourite cartoon show by far when I was in my tweens and teens.  Here was a character I could really identify with, someone who stood apart, a character who could see through the shallow pretences not just of her own peer group but of the adult world in general, a character who could dissect and analyse life with forensic insight. 

The show itself is a satire of American suburban life, with Daria commenting on the various absurdities she encounters in an amusingly sardonic fashion.  It was a pattern I adopted for myself, my own particular form of assertion and rebellion.  As I’ve matured I have, perhaps, become a little more accepting and a little less biting but there is still so much to be cynical about, so much foolishness to challenge. 

It seems to me that the best way of dealing with life’s frustrations is to develop a sense of detachment.  I do get angry with some of the more outrageous things that I see around me, I get angry at the shallowness and banality of so many of our politicians and public figures.  But it is not in my nature to campaign and protest.  Or, rather, such campaigning and protesting I do is through the medium of words. 

I love words and I love language.  I love to express my thoughts, to take arms against a sea of crassness and by opposing have a spot of impish fun.  Ana the Imp is my vehicle, a platform that has allowed me to sharpen my wit through observation and comment, to praise what is worthy of praise and expose what needs to be exposed. I’m a devil with words, I know, and this devil likes to dance! 

Loving words I also love to debate, something I’ve been doing since my school days.  I do not take prisoners, as some have found to their cost, and I have no hesitation in exposing folly, in exploiting weakness and stupidity when it deserves to be exposed.  Debating for me, you see, is just war by other means. 

OK, as I get older I begin to dissimulate a little more than I used to; I begin – heavens help me – to equivocate!  That’s truer of my personal life, of my relations with other people.  A certain amount of equivocation will always be necessary in this area, for the sake of harmony, if nothing besides.  But on the wider issues, the fashionable nonsense that pollutes so much of existence, be it windmills or gay marriage, there is no room for equivocation.  Irony is my weapon, one I will continue to use with ruthless precision.  Daria would expect no less. 

My advice is stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong. Remember, when the emperor looks naked, the emperor is naked. The truth and the lie are not "sort of" the same thing.

Daria Morgendorffer 

Future Past

Dedicated to Marty

I was once asked why I loved history so much; after all, what practical purpose did it serve? A question of this nature, it seems to me, is largely self-referential, already containing, in an age-old rhetorical fashion, its own answer. What practical use is history?

Think about it: what value or 'practical use' is there in anything; why think, why act, why believe, why write? If all of our intellectual life is to be reduced to a material and utilitarian calculus, then we might as well forget about poetry, literature, music, painting and philosophy, none of which have any practical value, as well as history. Why do I study history, why do I think it is important? Because I love the subject: I have as long as I can remember, and I offer no better excuse than that.

Maybe it serves no purpose, and maybe it really is all 'bunk', in the words of Our Ford, the great material God. I could, of course, trade history quotes for history quotes, some hostile and some favourable. My own 'leitmotiv', my guide and my recurrent theme, are the words of Gustav Flaubert, who said that "Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times."

The whole question came up again recently on Blog Catalogue, in a discussion thread touching on the various things people enjoy learning. As part of my response I said that, while I'm interested in lots of subjects, history has a special place in my heart. I was then asked what it was specifically that I found so engaging.

It's a good question but like all good questions it's not that easy to answer. It comes down, in the end, to one thing: each and every one of us is born with a special talent or aptitude. We are fortunate to discover it early in life, if we discover it at all; so many people go through life blind and unfulfilled.

Very early, even before I went to school, I discovered that I had a particular love and reverence for the past, a fascination that grew with the years. My grandfather, an old soldier, did much to stimulate my interest with his tales of the British Raj. But, as I said, I feel a connection with all past times, with vanished lives and vanished glories. As long as I can remember I’ve loved visiting historical sites, ruined castles, old churches and abbeys, thinking of far off things and battles long ago. History has a poignancy that moves me, lessons that we would do well to heed. There are a few lines in Rudyard Kipling’s poem Recessional which sums it up best;

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

We learned that at school, and it passed through my mind when I visited Rome for the first time, standing in the ruins of the Forum, near the spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March all those centuries ago. What was once great is now fragments and ruins. Noon, ever so high, will always sink into dusk. Poem was traded for poem. My attention was drawn to some wonderful lines by the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky;

Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.


I cannot address all creation but I can at least address the ages and I can address history. I can think of no better fate, that my future is all in the past

Making an End

The subject of year end posts came up in Blog Catalogue. I’ve never written one for the simple reason that in the time that Ana the Imp has been in existence I’ve never been around at the year end, signing off just before Christmas. Well, here I am, close to the midnight hour; so, in the absence of anything else, here is my premier year end post!

In a Janus-style I look back and I look forward. Speaking personally, it’s been a good year for me, one of the best ever, though I feel a slight sense of guilt for saying so, with all the troubles in the world, troubles in so many lives. I’m conscious of how fortunate and privileged I am, able to do things that so many others can only ever dream of. But it’s the only life I will ever have and I simply must make the best use of it in the way that I see fit.

My year began in Austria, there on a skiing trip; it will end also with a skiing trip. I was in Paris at Easter, pursuing every romantic cliché that you can imagine and a few you probably can’t! Then there was Peru and latterly Egypt, more experiences that will leave an indelible impression on my mind, not just because of the marvellous monuments I saw but because the people I met, decent, lovely people, no matter their race, religion or politics.

But travel is not just about personal gratification; it’s about understanding a little more about the world, seeing the mountain, so to speak, through other eyes and from other angles. If at the end, if in looking back, I can say it was all worth doing, that I have no regrets and I would do it all again without changing a thing, then I will be satisfied. Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will - it's only action that can make a woman. I offer apologies here for a slight adaptation of the words of Goethe.

My personal development continues; my reading gets broader and my experiences deeper, my intellect more subtle, my judgements less harsh; well, not quite as harsh as they once were. I have so many people I am thankful for: my wonderful parents, old friends and new friends, here, there and everywhere. And of course there is you; yes, you know who I’m talking about, my ever faithful shadow.

I look forward into the year of the Maya, the year of great events, anticipated and projected. Do I think something cataclysmic is going to happen? No, quite frankly, I don’t, but even if I did what could I do, what difference would it make? If the world goes then I go with it, a happy fatalist.

I certainly hope for the sake of America, and for the free world as a whole, that Barack Obama goes. I care nothing about his race, his ethnicity, his religious beliefs and the ambiguity over his birth certificate; all of that seems utterly irrelevant. What is relevant is his complete incapacity for high office, the almost total absence of the qualities of steadiness and determination that are essential handmaidens of leadership. America seems to be drifting at the moment; and when America drifts we drown.

Turning closer to home I see the European Union, that unnatural monster, descending ever deeper into chaos, a farce played out in several unappealing acts. I find it difficult to express how much contempt I have for the sad mediocrities in the chanceries and palaces across the Continent. In the words of Margaret Thatcher, they are indeed a pathetic bunch. The sane thing is for Britain to get out of the club, something I hope to see one day.

On the subject of Margaret Thatcher the first film I intend to see in the New Year is The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep in the title role. I can’t think of anyone else I would choose for the part. The advance publicity I’ve seen looks good. If it helps understand one of the truly great figures of the last century then it will have served its purpose very well, even if it is a warts and all portrayal. There is indeed a price to be paid for power, and with the highs come the inevitable lows. Enoch Powell was absolutely right in his assessment of political careers.

Well, that’s it, that’s enough, my end of year report. I’m leaving for France on New Year’s Day for a week’s skiing. So, I’ll see you all over another border in time. Have a very, very happy New Year and may it bring everything that you would wish for.

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

One Martini

Hotel standards vary hugely across the world and five stars does not always mean five stars. I’ve stayed in some wonderful places, formerly with my parents and latterly with lovers, friends and other travelling companions. I’ve been fortunate enough to tick off some of life’s ‘must does’ including relaxing in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the old wing that was blown up by Irgun in July, 1946, and enjoying a gin sling in Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the place where this famous cocktail was born.

I love cocktails; I love the tradition of the cocktail hour. My favourite is a champagne cocktail closely followed by a Pimm’s number one cup, though there are others I like when I’m in the mood, particularly a simple, or not so simple, dry martini. That’s the classic, that’s the drink by which all hotels should be measured, by their ability to mix a martini, not by stars.

The hotels I stayed in when I was in Egypt were all five stars by local assessment. They were generally good and the staff were highly obliging, always mindful of the prospect of baksheesh to make good the gap in their dreadful salaries, but my, oh, my, their martini standards were poor or non-existent!

Now, this is Egypt, a Muslim country, a country with a Muslim majority. Alcohol, while available, does not play a big part in the national consciousness. In future it may play no part at all, if the Islamist advance continues and the stricter forms of sharia law adopted. As it was I flew there and back with Egypt Air, which does not serve alcohol. My, all those hours without a snifter; how frustrating!

So, yes, alcohol is not that important. But one still expects a certain standard in international hotels, particularly those with a cocktail menu. There it was on the menu in Luxor, clearly stated - a dry martini. So, on this particular evening, having had enough of the gin fizz, I decided to have one. There was just one problem: I had to explain to the barman how it was done. Surely to goodness I’m not the first person even to have asked for this drink!

Perhaps the particular barman was a greenhorn? No, for none of his colleagues was any more knowledgeable. Basically I ended up mixing the drink myself, to the amusement of the other guests. It was done and it was good (I mix a fabulous martini!) There is just one problem; I like an olive in my drink, another essential the bar was without. “Just one moment, madam, and I’ll fetch some.”

Fine; off he goes and then he comes back, with a little dish of olives, green and black. One was pierced with a cocktail stick and added to my drink. For me it’s a little bonus at the end, eating my alcohol-saturated olive. I did, popped it in my mouth. But there were no hints of gin and vermouth; no, just a strong taste of vinegar. It was pickled. Definitely a one martini establishment.

Tale of a Sphinx

I’m sure that you will agree that we all visit certain places in our imagination, places we may never see in reality, whether it be Memphis or the Moon. There is something more, though: the power of imagination is often greater than mundane realities; but sometimes the power is just too petty.

I’ve been lucky; I’ve seen some wonderful places in my life, places that mostly met with the impression formed in the eye of my mind. Egypt was different; Egypt exceeded all. My imagination is too little. The traces left by the past are too great. Shelly was wrong. The mementos of Ozymandias are everywhere. I looked on his works and was filled with awe.

I’m in danger of exhausting my stock of superlatives, so I’m going to let someone else speak for me. She is Amelia Edwards, an English artist and writer who visited Egypt in the nineteenth century. It was standing in the great hypostyle hall in the temple of Karnak in Luxor that some words by her put everything into proper perspective, some words I read to my companions;

It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression…The scale is too vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one’s own dumbness, and littleness and incapacity, too complete and crushing.

It’s true, believe me, it’s true.

Egypt is such a contrast, a magnificent past and a not so magnificent present. Still, I met some wonderful people, including a highly knowledgeable local Egyptologist, full of hope for the future, hope that the promise of the February Revolution will be met. My natural disposition is one of caution to the point of cool reserve, but I could not fail to be impressed by their enthusiasm. I have things I have to say, though, things about the possible future of the country. I think it best if I to hold off on this for a day or so, a subject, possibly, for a Broowaha article.

My journey began as most journeys to Egypt begin, in the mad metropolis of Cairo! Incidentally – and thanks for all the emails and texts of concern – I missed the recent trouble in Tahrir Square, flying to Aswan a few days beforehand. I really only spent enough time in the city to visit the Museum, the Mosque of Mohammed Ali and the Pyramids to the south. More would have been excessive; more would have damaged my lungs and my temperament; for Cairo is the most congested city I’ve ever visited; the traffic is simply impossible.

Aswan, in Egyptian Nubia, is such a contrast, more relaxed, less demanding. Here one can really appreciate the beauty of the Nile, blue and utterly captivating. This was our base for a few days, on an island hotel. From here we set out across the Sahara to the great temple or Ramesses II at Abu Simbel. It was on a convoy, I might add, all complete with a police escort!

I’m looking out from the window of the bus at the passing Sahara, mile upon mile of sand and strange looking rocky outcrops, livened up by a growing number of watery mirages. I saw the beginnings of this great desert the day we visited the pyramids at Giza. It wasn’t at all what I expected, a sad disappointment of dirty, grey-looking sand, with shards of stone scattered around. But this is the wilderness as I imagined it, yellow and pure, vanishing into an impossible horizon. Day does not gradually evolve into night here; the division is sharp, first one condition and then the other.

Here, at Abu Simbel, I’m almost as far south as I can go in Egypt; not much further lies the Sudan. Here the ancient pharaoh still stares out in majesty, carved from the bare rock thirteen centuries before the birth of Christ. The temple is supposedly dedicated to the gods Amun, Ra-Horakhty and Ptah but the more obvious dedication is to Ramesses himself, a silent guardian over Upper Egypt, a statement about naked power, a warning to the Nubian raiders who dared venture north. This is Ozymandius, king of kings.

Others have been here before me, some of whom have left their own mark, elaborate and painstaking graffiti that go right back to the early nineteenth century, modern cartouches that must have taken days to carve. It’s possible to see this elsewhere, on other monuments, this pathetic and pointless plea for immortality, a tradition that seems to have been started by the soldiers of Bonaparte at the end of the eighteenth century. Gustave Flaubert, on his own sojourn some fifty years after, remarked on the sad emptiness of it all;

In the temples we read the travellers’ names; they strike us as petty and futile. We never write ours; there are some that must have taken three days to carve, so deeply are they cut in the stone. There are some that you keep meeting everywhere – sublime persistence of stupidity.

Now back in Aswan, I had dinner in the Old Cataract Hotel. Yes, I was hungry but there was another reason for eating here. You see, I’m a complete literary groupie; I followed Hemingway to Havana, Somerset Maugham to Singapore and now Agatha Christie to Aswan! She stayed in the Cataract Hotel and it features in Death on the Nile, the crime thriller I started to read before leaving Cairo.

The place itself is wonderful, the staff attentive, the food marvellous. There was only one thing: it was draped in a tomb-like silence. We were the only guests. It was the same everywhere: people seemed to have been frightened away. The numbers are absent, good for us, bad for Egyptians trying to make a living from tourism. “There is no business”, we kept being told.

So, yes, I started Death on the Nile in Cairo but I finished it in true style sailing on the Nile! We journeyed north from Aswan to Luxor, two nights on the river. At Kom Ombo, where the ship moored briefly before sailing on into the night, there was time to visit the wonderful double temple, dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile-headed god, and Horus, the falcon-headed god of the sky, the avatar and progenitor of all of the pharaohs. We have passed through centuries since leaving Abu Simbel; for Kom Ombo was built in the time of the Ptolemys, the Greek interlopers who were to be the last dynasts of pharonic Egypt.

I’m running out of wind, not short of impressions, of further wonders to tell, but in danger of exhausting your patience. It’s all so much to take in, Karnak, Philae, Luxor and Dendera, temples, monuments, museums and tombs, treasures of all kinds. The Valley of the Kings and Queens defy words, with figures of gods, goddesses and earthly rulers as vivid in colour as they were when first painted some three thousand years ago. If you ever go do be sure not to miss the tomb of Ramesses VI. The great tomb of Nefertari, the favourite wife of Ramesses II, a wonder among wonders, unfortunately can only be visited by special permission and at eye-watering expense.

My final days in the country were spent relaxing, swimming, reading and dreaming in a hotel in Luxor, just trying to absorb the whole experience. Oh, and not forgetting a wonderful evening in a café, the only woman in the place, smoking a sheesa with some friends. :-)

Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave:
She stood Monadnoc's head.

Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame;
"Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am."

Traveller to an Antique Land

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Friends, Romans, countrymen, as some of you clearly know, Ana is off on another adventure! I leave for Egypt on Saturday morning and will be away until close to the end of the month; so this is my last post for a bit. I've still got a huge amount to do, the usual last minute panic. Have I got this, have I got that, is my sun screen strong enough, should I take my shorts and risk another Egyptian revolution? My, my, the perils of travel. :-))

This is another important goal for me, planned now for an age. I have it all worked out, the best laid scheme of mouse and woman, which I really hope will not go askew! The political situation in Egypt earlier this year was a bit of a worry (how dare they plan a revolution around my travel plans?), but things seem to have settled down.

So, it’s off to Cairo initially, a few days there, first to say hello to Tutankhamen, thus avoiding the mummy’s curse, as well as having a peek at the Great Pyramid at Giza. Oh, how much I would love to shuffle my way to the top, just like Harriet Pringle in the televised adaptation of Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War! Will I be allowed? Possibly not, but interdicts and barriers are there to be overcome…in one way or another.

After Cairo we fly south to Aswan, our base for some further explorations: to the temples of Karnak and Luxor; to the great temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel; to the temple of Horus, the falcon god of the pharaohs, at Edfu; to the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens; to Thebes, the ancient religious capital of Egypt, and the city of the dead; to here and to there and to everywhere. Can I get there by candle-light? Yes, there and back again, because my heels are nimble and light.


That’s it, then, for another few weeks. Look for me again, when the candle burns low.

Mother of Darkness, Mother of Light

Another year has past, another season gone. The witches gathered on the funeral hill, waiting at the feast, for the first winter’s day, the first winter’s sun arising in the east; for death has come for the summer time and to take the leaves of spring; Hecate, Nemesis, Dark Mother take us in.

The light has gone, the dark begins, but we still fire the darkness; I did fire the darkness. Once again we had a marvellous festival of the dead, we the living, all my sisters and all my brothers, together for another sabbat, Samhain-Halloween, the most important of them all, a celebration of the past, of the past united in the present and flowing on to the future.

I did something different this year, away from London, deep in the Surrey country. Sisters and friends joined me for a ritual, a celebration and a party, made all the more complete with a traditional bonfire. We give renewed power to the sun, to ourselves, through the winter days ahead.

I paid particular reverence to Hecate, the goddess of witches and of magic; of crossroads and new beginnings, new beginnings in new life; goddess of moonlight, of thresholds and of gates, looking in three directions at once. Although her main festival follows later in November, All Hallows is also of great significance to her, the night of the dark moon, the night of the wild hunt.

A wild journey, a wild hunt, a supper by the crossroads, a dedication by the Trivia, that’s what makes it all so exciting, these sacred nights, that sacred night past, rich in meaning, rich in significance. Bliss was it in that darkness to be alive but to be young, and a witch, was very heaven. Let’s fly! :-)

Belladonna and aconite
Give to me the gift of flight
Take me up, airborne in the night
In a dream, across the sky
A hundred-million miles high
Take me ever onwards in the night
Dark sisters join my night flight
See how far you can climb
Holt’s with us on this bright night
Ride with him ‘cross the sky
As a screaming horde
We cut the scape
The Devil’s Apple exacerbates
To the sabbat on a demon steed I ride
Across the astral plane we race
The universe my fingers trace
And I am lost forever in my mind

Islands of my Dreams

My head and heart are still full of Peru…and Bolivia. Yes, we went to Bolivia as part of our Inca quest, our search for the sun and the sister moon. I’m getting too far ahead, though, because I want to say a word or two about the lovely white city of Arequipa and the misty mountain beyond, the lair of a fire god!

After Machu Picchu I was more physically, and spiritually, exhausted than I had anticipated. I’m fit, we both are, but the altitudes, the distance and the exertions, coupled with impression building on impression, really meant that we had to spend a couple of extra days in Cuzco in recovery. Since Lake Titicaca was the next big objective we almost decided to leave out Arequipa altogether. I’m so glad we did not. The recovery was quick and the flight short.

Arequipa is a super place, the second city of Peru, right in the bosom of the Andes. And there really is a Misty Mountain – El Misti, the volcano in the distance. This is not my first volcano – I’ve bagged several – but it is the one closest to my Platonic ideal, to what I imagine is everyone’s idea of what a volcano should look like, a snow-capped perfect cone. Arequipa’s colonial-era buildings were constructed using volcanic sillar, pearly-white in appearance, giving it the nickname of White City. The churches, the mansions and the Plaza de Armas all shine with this material.

We lunched there, in the arcades of the Plaza de Armas, looking out on to the huge cathedral, which takes up the whole of one side. The Basilica Cathedral, much knocked about by earthquakes through time, the most recent ten years ago, is impressive but to my mind not nearly as impressive as the Santa Catalina Convent, so long isolated from the outside world. It’s almost like a citadel, a city within a city, one which has completely altered my image of the austerity of cloistered life! We were fortunate to be there on a Tuesday evening, one of the two in the week when the place is illuminated by torches and candles, a magical effect.

So, back to Cuzco and on to Puno by the shores of Lake Titicaca, another magical sight, with water as blue and as deep as the sky. Puno itself is not massively interesting but the lake was attraction enough. We went sailing though I decided to avoid the floating reed islands of Los Uros, too horribly spoiled by tourism. That’s the paradox, is it not; people like me come to these places in wonder only all too often destroying the wonder in the process. At least I hope I come with a sense of reverence, not doing too much damage to local customs and mores, eating what local people eat and respecting what local people respect.

Now I know you have probably heard this heaps of times but Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world. There we were, floating along at almost three times the height of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain. Thrilling, yes it was, but cold, oh, so cold, especially at night.

I would have liked also to have visited the funeral towers of Sillustani but time was beginning to bite at our heels; so on to the bus, on to Copacabana and on to Bolivia. This was an alteration to our original plan (by now Cartagena was totally out of the question) but Titicaca is the sacred heart of the Incan civilization and the sacred heart of the sacred heart can only properly be visited from the Bolivian side, with easy access to Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna – the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon.

Isla Del Sol is not just the largest island on Lake Titicaca it was also the most revered holy site in the Incan Empire, the legendary birthplace of their civilization. It was here that Inti, the Sun God, was born. It was also where Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the Inca Adam and Eve, came to life. Manco Capac and his sister-wife then travelled to Cusco, building a temple dedicated to their father, Inti, and founding the Inca civilization – the Sun in splendour.

We decided to avoid the normal tour boats, which only allow one an hour or two at most on the island, instead hiring our own craft, spending overnight at Yumani on the southern side of the island. I particularly appreciated the welcome from the Inca at Yumani harbour!

So on up the Inca Steps on our way to the ruins at Chincana on the north of the island by way of Titicaca – the Rock of the Puma – after which the Lake is named. There is just so much to see across the islands, impossible to take in, really, in the few days we spent in Bolivia. Having been to the Sun I also went to the Moon, the nearby island, which has the remains on an Incan nunnery, an absolute must see for me!

Anyway, having done most of the things I wanted to do we journeyed on to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, for an overnight stay. Alas there was no proper time to explore this mountain city, for in the morning we flew back to Lima for the onward connection to Heathrow, England, home and beauty. Goodnight Peru, goodnight Bolivia, goodnight to the Sun and the Moon and the islands of my dreams. Good morning Egypt. :-)