I’m writing this on board the plane to Bari – a first for me.  I’m so tired I can’t sleep, stuck in limbo between places, anxious, as ever about what I’ll find when I arrive.  A dread instilled in me by a worrying Mother who was capable of working herself into frenzy if I was even a few minutes late.   Even if I wasn’t late come to think of it. On Friday and Saturday I attended the last two days of my Humanist funerals course, during which we trainee celebrants each conducted “mock” funerals.  I presided over the burial of fiesty motorcycle riding, drug abusing Kellie in the grounds of the St John’s hotel, Solihull, on Friday afternoon as the sun went down.  Having done four burials on the Friday we sat through nine cremations at the Robin Hood Crematorium on the Saturday.  The day began with a tour of the “backstage” areas, including the ovens and a collection of blackened artificial hips and knee joints, by a lugubrious Brummie with a beergut and a...

“Same day vaccinations” it said on the internet.  The clinic was in a big Victorian terrace on a main road near Leicester city centre.   I had to negotiate an entry phone and was then let into to a very smart suite of offices with soft carpets, swirling feature wallpaper and chandeliers.  The attractive young asian PA told me to fix myself a coffee and the Doctor would see me shortly.  Sure enough I was shown into the surgery a few minutes later, coffee in hand.  Behind an imposing desk lounged a young asian guy with slick black hair, an expensive shirt and a very personable manner. Talking through the options for vaccination he made me feel relaxed, despite the subject matter.  “Yes, I’d definitely get a rabies vaccination.  Trouble is there is not much of the post infection vaccine available these days and without you are dead, no question.”   Actually we couldn’t do that one as it needs a jab a week for three weeks.  But I settl...

This is Denise, my landlady during my four weeks in Brighton doing the “CELTA” English language teaching course.  The three people gathered with me round the dinner table are my fellow students: Ali from Dubai; Enrico from Trento in Northern Italy and; Natalia from Mexico. It seems strange to think that I knew none of these people four short weeks ago and now I feel like I’m leaving my surrogate family.  Denise is a devout Catholic with a mixed English/French background and political views somewhere to the right of Pope John Paul II.  She also has the proverbial “heart of gold”.  At seventy seven years of age and with a hip operation due in a few days, she looks after four students, including giving us all a hearty breakfast and a solid supper and doing our washing.  On top of this she has that wonderful knack of creating a chaotic, welcoming and homely atmosphere where people feel free to do as they wish.  And all for £115 per week.   She insisted o...

There’s been a long gap in this blog while I went to the UK to study for my Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA).  Four weeks of twelve-hour days seven days a week.  Before the course I laughingly thought that I would have a little time and space to write my blog and have the odd day out.  Instead it’s been: get up; go for a run along the Brighton seafront; finish the lesson plan for that day’s teaching; discuss the lesson plan with my tutor and fellow trainees; give the lesson; analyse the lesson; have a sandwich and talk about teaching; go to training sessions on how to teach; go home and work on an assignment about teaching; look at watch; say “good God is that the time?” And; go to bed. Twelve of us started this intellectual and emotional assault course and eleven of us finished.  Most of the others are twenty somethings looking to travel or just to get a job in this increasingly tough economic climate.  Decent people and ...

This is what Sue is constantly being asked in Borneo.  When indeed.  My life right now is made of lists.  I spend my days ticking things off, adding new things and studying.  Studying English, trying to get to grips with stuff which for some reason I never learned when I acquired the language in the first place: adverbs; clauses; perfect tenses and; past participles.  Studying funerals, I've now written my first Humanist funeral service for my course. Also trying to sell the boat.  I've slashed the price and four people were interested at the last count. On my laptop I have two countdown clocks: one showing how long before I return to the UK for my teaching English as a foreign language course and to finish my funeral celebrant course (14 days, 1 hour and 56 minutes) and; one showing my deadline for leaving for Borneo (64 days, 2 hours and 55 minutes).  Why the extra hour?  Of course, the clocks change. Sue meanwhile is having a fascinating ...

God I feel old today.  I flew from Bari to Birmingham via Zurich this morning, so I could attend the first day of my Celebrant course.  Having checked into my hotel I took a stroll around the city centre.  I have been coming here since the early seventies.  First as a schoolboy in a canal boat and later as a stressed executive in a company car.  As I walked around layer after layer of memories began to be peeled away. On the way back to the hotel I dropped into an Indian restaurant and found myself in a building over the canal that you can see in both these photos, looking out over Gas Street Basin.  When I first came here forty years ago the Basin was derelict and forgotten and the only way to get into it was through a gap in the fence of the ATV Television Centre car park.  Now it's a fashionable post-industrial residential and shopping zone.  In the intervening period there has even been time for a new pub to be built and fall derelict, now b...

The day after my last post Sue got confirmation of her job in Borneo along with a whole raft of information, so we are now running around like maniacs. Sue sets off for Kota Kinabalu from Bari Airport on Friday.  Last weekend we spent booking tickets and pouring over Google Earth at the 20 possible postings Sue had to chose from.  She finally settled on Mukah a small fishing town in Sarawak. Originally I planned to join her before Christmas, but already I can feel the pull of a new adventure and hope to depart by the end of November if possible.  This would mean leaving Puglia in mid October to go to the UK where my current plan is to do my British Humanist Society celebrant training and a one month Teaching English as a Foreign Language course in Brighton. I feel scared and disorientated by the speed with which all this is happening and I will be sad to see Sue off on Friday, even though we will hopefully see each other again before November is out. The local spe...