You may have heard by now about the earthquake we had here on Weds night! I slept through it completely. My mum who lives about 50 miles from Market Rasen, the epicentre, woke up and decided she'd been dreaming about being on a ship in a storm! Sarah H.
People Are So Fickle Hardly anyone reads my blog now. In fact 90% of the count is me clicking on it to check whether anyone has read it! Rest assured that I continue to read yours. However, you could be getting a low hit count because you have an e-mail reminder thingy. Every time you update your blog I get an e-mail telling me you've done it - so I don't need to check every day for new posts.
Am back in Swansea at the moment (refurb starts on Monday - nervous? Me? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...) J x
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but a marathon.... Hello you two, could you send some of those branches over and someone to hit me with them after the marathon in April....???
Read more: www.justgiving.com/keeponrunninghp
Hi Guys I'm still here, still reading. I'm about to have a fortnight's leave though so may not be able to comment whilst I'm away. Itinerary is now Swansea --> London --> Cornwall --> Swansea (Marrakech just being too difficult to sort along with everything else that's going on at the moment). You're both looking and sounding good and I'm dead impressed that you'll come back from all this speaking Spanish. Keep up the good work. J x
Giving Something UP, putting something IN Hello All
Thank you for the birthday wish. I'm really proud of your giving up meat and contributing the cost to the school. In these times of mass consumption, it's worthwhile remembering you can't just consume, you also need to contribute.
I'm currently putting a lot of effort into my training for the Flora London Marathon, which is just 2 months away. I note that the 'Diving Bell and the Butterfly' which inspired me to raise money and run for SIA (Spinal Injuries Association) has just come out in the UK as a film. If any of you manage to see it and feel inspired to support me, my just giving site is: www.justgiving.com/keeponrunninghp. It's the donations, no matter how large or small, that will keep me going on the day.
All the best, HP x
Just a Quickie to say hi and let you know I'm still reading and keeping up to date with your adventures (as if you ever doubted me!). You'll have all my news from my blog so keep on having fun. J x
It Was Good For Me Too I could watch lava all day (incidentally, the "welsh bread" is actually seaweed). Its like those nature films where you get the first rains after a drought and they show the river bed filling up. Mesmerising. My news is all on my blog so you're probably up to date with me (I can see by my tracker that you're still checking it out). No other news really. Refurb still hasn't started. We're now at the anniversary of the start of the whole process. Am still convinced (just) that it will all be worth it in the end... J x
We've all enjoyed the lava too. You could do reports for your readers like bbc news. Travel - maybe get a train at St Pancras and see how far we can go - but not as far as you! We've just been to a local wildlife sight that I'm sure fellow reader, JGP, has also seen - thousands and thousands of starlings making patterns in the sky over Otmoor.
At last - cocktails get a mention! Meanwhile, the whole volcano/lava thing was excellent. Lava flow B worked best for me personally. Hope the banks come through for you too.
borborygmus great videos - loaded quickly and played easily, loved the soundtrack! lava B sounded like rumbling guts (message title). looks nothing like that welsh bread. lets have more food news! my holiday plans? huge change from netherlands for feb 29 trip - we are going to belgium, there's daring.
no resolutions but some talk of snow Hi guys, enjoying your blogs although it means that Gabby no longer plans to do her paper journal next time we go away! Can you do a TravelBlog for a weekend in the Isle of Wight?? No NY resolutions (too busy to drop any vices!) but our 1st ski trip since I don't care to remember planned for March. We are meeting up with Andrea (did you know A? next door neighbour at The Chine) and her 3 older children (It husband staying at home in Como with their toddler) up in the Dolomites. (Stop reading Hugh)... Snow is good at the moment, but not going until Easter, so hoping it will last.... (OK... no more snow talk). Take care..... Alice xx
no jokes Happy New Year to you both. I've just been catching up with your january postings (and bumping up your stats). Really hope you've recovered from the bites Sarah. I've learned so much from the blog eg go to Laos for peace and quiet. I'm a keen reader of Hugh's cycling notes - I've just got a new bike myself to replace the one that got nicked. Looking forward to the next instalment. take care, Mike
no resolution great to keep up with your travels without having to share the hassles. I am part of your viewing stats but I don't quite seem to get round to posting a comment, unlike namesake jonathan. Sorry not to join in on the dog/meat debate, especially as my sister in law is korean! live and let live I say, but then that's what all veggies say. keep up the culinary news, fascinating - what's the worst thing you ever knowingly ate? no january blues in the northeast, two hours daylight is plenty. signature weak joke: what did freud say was between fear and sex? (funf). pip pip, jon
Stats H: We're not too dispirited, we can see the number of viewings for each blog - 'Crossing Continents' already has 22 (not all of them are us!) and the most popular 'Dasvidanya Russia, sain bai-na uu Mongolia' has 164 ('Messing about in boats' hasn't done badly either - with a little help from the dogs...)
I'll Say... ...we're enjoying your accounts. At least I am even if no-one else is. But as I said before, don't be too dispirited by the lack of people commenting. Are you aware of the number visiting your site? Mine has just passed 3000 - since 02/12! And you're certainly helping with my geographic profile. By the time you get back I bet I'll have one of the most widely read b logs around.
Really looking forward to your next few visits: Hong Kong and San Francisco - shopping and homosexuality, my 2 favourite things! Travel safely. J x
hi guys Really enjoying reading the blog. You always put so much detail in that's it really easy to imagine it all. And of course the photos help. Staying in touch like this almost makes it feel like you haven't gone away (although I'm fairly sure you don't feel the same way!). In fact I think we may have more contact now than we did when you were just in Leeds - unless we had a technical question for each other of course... My NY resolution is not to buy any new clothes or accessories... in January (come on, I couldn't last longer than that). So I bought a couple of guide books today to cheer myself up. They're for Milan though so it somewhat keeps the shopping theme going. Anyway, great to hear from you as always and it looks like your weather is nicer than ours. I had to walk back from the helpline last night through thunder, lightening and hail! J x
Wanderlust The latest edition has just come through the door with special articles on Laos and the Trans Siberian Railway. Are you sending your e-mails to them too? Happy new year. k xx
Are Dogs Human? Answer, no they're not. I know this seems a pretty fundamental point but its one that it seems to me the advocates of "animal rights" get a bit confused over. If you eat animals then you are not according them the most fundamental of all rights i.e. the right to life. If you are vegetarian and use animal products (such as milk, eggs etc) then you are exploiting animals regardless of whether or not they are kept in decent conditions. Is anyone advocating that we should pay animals for the products we take from them? No they're not. And why aren't they? Because most people recognise animals and humans are different. Which is why, of course, we don't eat other humans.
But to indulge Tim for a moment... What would happen if we accorded animals all the rights that humans have? Well, we wouldn't be able to eat them (the right to life). We wouldn't be able to keep them as pets (the right to liberty). We wouldn't be able to use their products without according them payment (humans get paid for the work they do). And if we did accord them rights then we would also, presumably, have to insist that they also accorded us our rights. Would we start locking up all carnivores as criminal murderers? Its plainly ridiculous to suggest that animals should have the same rights as humans. Once you accept that then you are accepting that humans and animals are different.
The question then becomes whether animals should have any rights at all and, if so, what those rights should be. How about the right to a life free of pain? What would that mean? Free from all pain? What about if it was for the animal's own good (medical treatment for instance). Who would decide what was "for the animal's own good"? Would we have to ban all fishing? What about hunting? What about "inhumane" cultural practices? The answer is, it can't be done.
And as for suggesting that because I advocate treating animals differently from humans that I am some kind of racist, I won't even dignify that argument with a response. J
Yup, I agree with Andy that generally we treat our food animals shamefully over here (interestingly there are currently trailers on the telly for a series in which Hugh Fearnley-W is going to remind us of what's still going on in the battery hen industry. If he can match the level of intervention achieved by "School Dinners" Jamie we might see something actually happen on that score) and with Tim that we can acknowledge that animals have rights while agreeing that we aren't respecting them. And thinking of eating culturally-inappropriate animals let's not forget that only a few miles away some Frenchie is tucking into a steak made from Black Beauty, the swine. Also on a food note; love the "prawns in flowers" as pictured above. I shall be borrowing that serving suggestion for my next little soiree....
I'm so sorry to hear that the bed bugs are still with you. Reading about you first encountering them brought back rueful memories of my first (and only so far) encounter with them in a hotel in Colombia many years ago. I had no problems while I was sleeping in hammocks for 50p a night but towards the end of my stay I treated myself to a more fancy place (about £5 a night, if memory serves) and woke up after a couple of hours, bitten all over. I well remember the horror as it dawned on me what the problem was - I do sympathise, Sarah. I "slept" on chair for the rest of the night but I get the impression you didn't have that choice. I'd forgotten all about the horrendous business of having to wash every damn thing afterwards but your account has brought it all back! Probably the first time I haven't been envying your trip. Anyway, you don't seem to have let it get to you - full marks for positive attitude. Your account of the rice wine evening brought back other, equally rueful, memories from Colombia of "aguardiente" evenings (and mornings after). I did it more than once, but I was a lot younger.......
Animals We are all animals - so the question should be why don't canivores eat humans?
Jonathan you don't make a argument as to why other animals don't have rights other than that they are different and humans already deny them their rights - shades of the way many humans were denied rights just because of their skin colour. Also just because their rights weren't respected didn't mean they didn't have any.......
Dogs Andy is right of course, if you're going to consume bits of an animal, use parts of an animal (shoes) or simply cage an animal in any way (this includes "pets") then you have already accepted that those animals don't have a right to life (food and shoes) or the right to liberty (pets and bunny rabbits in laboratories). If you accept that they don't have those 2 most fundamental of rights then how can you argue that they are entitled to be accorded "lesser" rights such as the right to live a life free from pain? In my (controversial I know) opinion, if you don't live a vegan lifestyle and keep no pets then you have no intellectual basis for arguing that animals have any rights at all. Discuss! J x
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You may have heard by now about the earthquake we had here on Weds night! I slept through it completely. My mum who lives about 50 miles from Market Rasen, the epicentre, woke up and decided she'd been dreaming about being on a ship in a storm! Sarah H.