1 September 2021

2008

Once again, courtesy of my digital  photograph files, I am looking back to a year before the war pandemic. Today I am recalling 2008 - thirteen years ago. The happy fellow shown above was strolling around the market that Shirley and I visited in March of that year. We were in Goa in western India. Staying in a small hotel beyond the sand dunes of Candolim, we enjoyed a happy holiday which, if you are interested I blogged about here.

Early in May, I visited the west coast of Ireland - mostly to see my niece Katie and her then husband Seamus with their brand new baby girl - Cait. Hell, she'll be thirteen now...
On the 24th of that same month, a dream came true for Hull City supporters everywhere. Down at Wembley Stadium in London, our beloved team finally made it to the top flight of English football with a  scorcher of a goal from local legend - Dean Windass. We beat Bristol City and there's Mr Windass after the match - shown on the big screen at the Bristol City end of the ground. It was our day.
In August, Shirley and I went to Olu Deniz in Turkey. We kept seeing paragliders  drifting down from the mountains adjacent to the coastline. She was keen to try it and with some understandable cowardice reluctance, I caved in to her nagging persuasion. I was strapped to a burly Turkish fellow and we flew down to the beach below like a bird. Those are my shoes - above the lagoon. It was an unforgettable experience. I guess I was just a strap-on. 

In the last couple of days of our Turkish holiday, I contracted a serious e-coli infection - possibly through something I had eaten or more likely from the mud baths we visited. I was very poorly but I was keen to take some pictures of Sheffield's famous cooling towers at Tinsley before they were blown up. See below. Fortunately a course of heavy duty antibiotics - taken intravenously in The Royal Hallamshire Hospital - finally saw off the ESBL . In past times, death would most certainly have taken me.
In November, with the ESBL infection well behind me, Shirley and I stayed in Yorkshire's smallest city - Ripon. Of course we visited the nearby ruins of Fountains Abbey but the photograph I have chosen to share is of the city's then hornblower which will, I am sure, have special appeal for Meike in Ludwigsburg, Germany who absolutely loves Ripon and its hornblowers "setting The Watch" in the marketplace as they have done nightly for over a thousand years...

32 comments:

  1. Another action packed year to remember. Thank goodness for heavy duty antibiotics!

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    1. Without them this blog would have come to a shuddering and permanent halt in early September 2008.

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  2. Anonymous11:22 am

    Goa, beach parties and drugs. Great fun. I am sure you enjoyed yourselves.

    A burly Turkish man with a strap on tells me you are certainly adventurous.

    I've not heard of ESBL. About that time a youngish workmate returned from Africa and he was ill for a long time with similar symptoms. Now I wonder if it was ESBL.

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    1. Beach parties and drugs - sounds like you know what you are talking about Andrew. If your colleague had had ESBL he could not have got better naturally. The powerful antibiotics were the only way back to health.

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  3. You take us there, Neil.
    The e-coli was frightful reading for someone who has never ventured outside Europe. I avoid takeaways and refuse horseradish + mayonnaise in restaurants.

    In the 1970s a pal of mine caught e-coli in the high Andes: the kindly Indians fried him fresh eggs with what must have been infected oil.
    Barry said he thought he'd never see his girlfriend and Morecambe again.

    Did the euphoria of paragliding outweigh the trepidation?
    Describe for us the moment of taking off.
    Does it feel natural to be a bird? I was on a glider once above Perthshire.

    As a kid I read Erich von Daniken, who was convinced the ancients learned to fly on gliders, and so they planned their monumental structures from the air.
    I know von Daniken made unwarranted leaps yet I have a weakness for Ancient Aliens on YouTube. Aliens are our ghost stories.

    Thanks to our NHS and antibiotics you evaded that appointment in Samarra.
    May the hornblower of Ripon pipe out many more days for us all.
    Haggerty

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    1. You travel the rough track up to the mountain summit in a bumpy old open top 4x4. Then you meet your "expert" pilot. He straps you on in front of him with the parachute laid out behind. Then you run together down the slope and the breeze catches the parachute. Suddenly you are up, up above the trees like a bird and it's so quiet apart from the air rushing past. You can almost touch the treetops. Then you're past the pine forest, over a ridge and there hundreds of feet below you is the emerald sea. People move below like ants and you feel like an eagle riding on the thermals. It is a perspective that ancient people could have only dreamt about. The thrill of this experience far outweighed the trepidation - that is for sure.

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    2. I have been watching Randy Crawford on YouTube, *One Day I'll Fly Away.* TopPop.
      The silence you describe is the other side of music.
      H.

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    3. I wonder if she was - Randy I mean.

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  4. Excellent blog YP, and interesting to see Olu Deniz from above. We had two excellent holidays in Turkey (in the mid 1980's) and on the second trip visited Olu Deniz for the day. A long haul from our hotel just outside Dalyan, but worth the 4 a.m. start for a day spent in such spectacular surroundings - it was only very sparsely developed those days!
    Glad you survived to tell the tale!

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    1. Incredibly my Turkish companion was able to glide down to a patch of grass just outside the sales office on the beachfront. It was as if I was jumping off a kerbstone.

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  5. You have certainly traveled far and wide. And high! You have an adventuresome soul, Mr. P.!

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    1. I guess that's true. It is so frustrating that COVID came along. I want to do another big trip in America... land of the free.

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  6. I'm not sure if I would still be married if my wife has said paraglide or else.

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    1. I am so glad that Mrs Pudding pushed me into it.

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  7. A very busy and rewarding year, minus the e-coli. Why have I heard of Ripon? I think some friends of French friends lived there. I'm still smiling at the name Windass. I'm now 12. :)

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    1. Windass would have been a suitable nickname for Donald Trump.

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    2. Indeed it would have been! Memory is a fine thing. By some miracle, the names of that couple popped into my mind (Ken and Sylvia Locke) and sure enough there was/is a Sylvia Locke in Ripon. I think my parents visited there. I'll have to ask my mom.

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  8. Wow, you do get about! I think I'd pass on the paragliding though.

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  9. The happy Goa fellow looks like he supports Blackpool FC.

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  10. Interesting retelling of your journeys. You were very wise to do some adventuresome travel when you were young.

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    1. Maybe there comes a day when one lacks the urge to travel.

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  11. Your post from 2008 was the most beautiful writing I have read in a long time. I went on a dream like ride by your side and felt every emotion you conveyed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and mind.

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    1. Thank you or these kind and encouraging words Barbara.

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  12. There is a lot in this post to comment on, but let me just say that it is lovely to see my friend George Pickles, who was the Hornblower until 2012, appear on your blog!
    Paragliding is something I am in two minds about; I guess I would love it but I am scared to try it.
    Is your niece in Ireland the one who is a great singer and musician? I seem to remember you posted a video of her singing.

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    1. Yes that is the same Katie. And I remember you posting about Mr Pickles.

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  13. Well let us all be thankful for antibiotics and that you survived to tell the tale. Not sure I could have taken off to paraglide though.

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    1. Paragliding can be a very dangerous activity yet I put my faith in a complete stranger... I must have been mad but it was worth it.

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  14. What is that yellow liquid I see, seeping into your shoes? Surely you didn't take a bottle of Lucozade with you for your paraglide!

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  15. That paragliding looks terrifying. On the other hand, being strapped to a burly Turkish fellow doesn't sound so bad.

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