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Published: November 27th 2008
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If only Emma wrote this blog so fast that it made her hand blur... Written 27/11/08 but posted elsewhere
Matt writes: After what, to most, must seem like an extraordinary amount of time from our previous post, I must offer you, the avid, or in some cases, painstakingly loyal reader, an apology, the size of which can only be proportioned to this un-excusable silence on both our behalves. We have, it seems, slipped somewhat on updating you on our worldwide adventure.
But before I make that apology, I do have to at this point clarify that we made it back to England and we’re not (as some were lead to believe) stuck in the middle of a Vietnamese jungle, but thanks for your concern nonetheless.
We’re getting away with this lack of ending to the story on a technicality, as
technically speaking our journey hasn’t ended as yet - the final leg of our flight around the world from Madrid to London is yet to be flown and flown it shall this very weekend. We’re making a quick trip from London to Madrid in order to use said final flight, instead of being charged hundreds of dollars for not turning up for it. Strange logic maybe, but it seems they can infact charge a fee for a “no-show” on a flight that’s already been paid for. And it also means the airmiles we’ve racked up won’t go to waste either. For what they’re worth.
And we still, unfortunately, have to abuse the never ending and most gracious hospitality of our friends to whom we are forever indebted. As no fixed abode remains stamped across our foreheads, we still therefore are the wanderers, the littlest hobos, wandering this earth as aimlessly as we began nearly a year ago.
Now to try and explain and apologise for the lack of contact: What essentially started as an efficient way of keeping all our nearest and dearest updated to our current location an exploits has transformed itself into a labour of love, following us around like a petulant teenager, a rather blackened cloud huffing and puffing the promise of a downpour at anytime in an otherwise cloudless sky (except for Bolivia - see post entitled "Bolivia & Stuck in La Paz").
No, as fun as we may have found composing this blog, one did stop to think on many occasions - is my time being spent wisely tapping furiously into a keyboard (spelling mistakes and all) while the world we came to see is out there? The wondrously wide world, not the www version of uploaded photos and amateurish clichés that make up these comprehensions.
Yes indeed sitting in a hot, hot room full of noisy school children blowing each other up in a virtual World of Warcraft or whatever it was they felt the most appropriate vehicle of noisy destruction to stab, shoot, or grenade launcher their neighbouring gamer into oblivion.
No. The slow connections, monochrome monitors, keyboards with funny buttons where Xs where Ss and where I don’t want to begin to explain how to produce a question mark without dislocating the 3rd finger on your right hand, even fellow customers who seemed quite content to explore their sexual curiosities (no matter how illegal) on the terminal right next to you has not made writing these episodes as glamorous as it may sometimes seem to the reader.
I will be quite honest with you. All factors considered, writing and more so keeping a travel blog up to date is not quite the same as perhaps you would picture Phileas Fogg, quill to journal as a train ride took him through, say, New Deli. Sipping on some Earl Grey out of some delicate bone china next to a curtain framed window and on a table adorned with some fetching gas lamp and lace doyleys no doubt.
We have been both complimented and complained to and irrespectively touched by the amount of you who have commented on our journal and therefore all the more guilty for failing quite miserably to conclude this account of our round the world travels.
I will confess I have at times been, well, a little flowery. Carried away somewhat in the moment, but in my defence, there are some experiences that are so humbling and leave one so in awe, in boyish wonder and naive amazements that simply promotes such extravagant descriptions. Photos or words or combination of the two fall pathetically short in doing justice some of the great events we have been witness to.
Emma’s style on the other hand much more slick and to the point. Easier to the eye and manageable say over a coffee break as opposed to my accounts that probably need printing out and bound for a long train.
So yes we are still alive, and yes I am too longwinded. But, we will continue adding our exploits in their chronological order rather than when we actually wrote them. We hope that you find this no more confusing than perhaps George Lucas starting his Star Wars trilogy (of 6 parts) at part 4 as opposed to part one or the beginning as most sensible people would. We cannot guarantee exactly when these instalments will be made available as I will probably fall into my thesponian bouquet of words along the way, whereas Emma will keep oh so short and to the point that she may be in danger of writing nothing at all. And if you do find this all too much to bare, then well, you can always look at the pretty pictures.
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