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31 pages

English

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Description

'We hear the patrol boat before we see it. A motoric throb resonates from deep within the sea mist. White swirls wrap the dark-pitted peaks of Morocco as they float upwards, mysterious and intangible in the distance...'

Teaching around the world for over forty years, Julie Watson retells her travel memories in vivid flashbacks of times, places and personal encounters.

The argument in an Italian ice cream queue, a bumpy becak ride in Indonesia, African migrants washing up on a Spanish beach, venomous scorpions dancing in the Mexican sun.

Travel Mementos is a collection of true stories from locations around the world. Spanning continents and cultures, the evocative retelling of these personal memories will transport, surprise and delight you in an immersive reading experience.

Contents

Introduction 11

Rights of Passage 15

Table Manners for Eating Noodles 18

Gelato - As It Once Was 21

The Dance of the Scorpions 25

Irish Black Gold 28

Travels in the Company of P38 31

Displaced on the Spanish Plain 36

Where Europe Ends 40 Blushing Onions and Therapy by the Sea 44

Lovestruck in Leningrad 48 Seeing Red in the Canary Islands 54

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Bay of Biscay 57

A Ride into the Shadow Underworld 61

The Mystery of a Nudge in the Night 66

Birdsong 70

The Village of Cloves 73

The Misadventure of a Goose 76

The Last Wood Turner 81 A Long Shot 84

Senior Moments in Segovia 90

Sujets

Travelogues

Essays

Travel writing

Travel

Informations

Publié par	Beachy Books
Date de parution	22 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781913894054
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Travel Mementos

About the Author
Julie Watson taught in countries around the world and in UK higher education before retiring to the Isle of Wight in 2016. She has published research in her academic field and has travelled extensively during her career. Soon after coming to live on the island, she took up kayaking, joined the Wight Writers group and started writing up her travel memoirs.
Her first book, Travel Mementos, is a collection of personal stories about some of the faraway places she has visited. She is now writing a second book on an entirely different topic.
When not writing, she teaches English to refugees, paddles her kayak up and down the creeks of the Western Yar and takes an interest in natural history. When at home, she is at the beck and call of a small feline house guest.

Travel Mementos

Personal Stories
about Faraway Places

Julie Watson

First published by
Beachy Books Partner Publishing in 2021
(an imprint of Beachy Books Limited)
www.beachybooks.com
1
Copyright © 2021 Julie Watson The right of Julie Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
eBook ISBN: 9781913894054
Also available as a paperback
ISBN: 9781913894047

This book is dedicated to my parents, who wondered if I would ever stop travelling.

Contents
Introduction
Rights of Passage
Table Manners for Eating Noodles
Gelato - As It Once Was
The Dance of the Scorpions
Irish Black Gold
Travels in the Company of P38
Displaced on the Spanish Plain
Where Europe Ends
Blushing Onions and Therapy by the Sea
Lovestruck in Leningrad
Seeing Red in the Canary Islands
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Bay of Biscay
A Ride into the Shadow Underworld
The Mystery of a Nudge in the Night
Birdsong
The Village of Cloves
The Misadventure of a Goose
The Last Wood Turner
A Long Shot
Senior Moments in Segovia

Orbis terrarum liber est, et illi qui non commeant modo unam paginam legunt
(author unknown)

Introduction
W hen I was very young I had a picture book about people from different countries around the world. It was full of stereotypes but I was fascinated by the exotic illustrations of people in national costume holding their country’s national dish. There was a map, showing where they all lived. I would study the pictures wondering how and why their lives could be so different from my own. I remember badly wanting to see those places for myself, so much so that a few years later I started writing my own travel stories. These were imaginary rather than actual experiences as I did not find the means to travel until I was older. But those first fictitious attempts were for my own gratification.
One summer, many years later, found me teaching English in a language school in Cambridge. I must have been in my early twenties by then. It was morning coffee break and all the teachers were gathered in the tiny staffroom. Among them was Jacky, an actress if I remember, but she was, as they say, ‘resting’ between roles. So that summer she was teaching to pay the bills. Somehow the conversation turned to palm reading. Casually, she announced, ‘I can read palms. My mother was taught by an Indian Fakir and she taught me.’
‘Read mine; read mine!’ we all shouted at once, thrusting out our hands but then the bell rang for lessons again. Not to be denied, someone had an idea. By the end of the day we had all visited the photocopier, sandwiched a hand between the glass screen and the lid and pressed the copy button. That evening Jacky took home a stack of anonymous hand copies to read and annotate as well as the usual pile of students’ homework to mark.
The next day I reclaimed my photocopy and pored over her reading of the various lines and creases of my palm. I was curious rather than believing. Nevertheless, I still have that piece of paper four decades later. ‘This person will travel a lot…,’ she had written. This pleased me but then I read, ‘…and was probably born abroad.’ I fulfilled the first prophecy but to my knowledge, not the second—at least, my parents have always told me that I was born in Coventry. Jacky had also written, ‘this person could write’ (this was underscored I remember) along with ‘but lacks willpower.’ The latter also turned out to be true. I made a few tentative starts at writing through the years and even had a few articles published but failed to find the necessary commitment to take writing more seriously until I retired. I then had no more excuses.
So I’ve made it happen. Here are my travel stories. The book contains twenty true stories spanning different continents and cultures. I hope that each conveys a sense of place, time and personal encounter and that you enjoy reading them—in whatever order you choose. The titles are listed below in case you have a favourite geographical region where you would like to start. Lastly, just in case she’s on another ‘rest’ from acting and reading this, my thanks must go to Jacky, woman of many talents, for her prophetic reading of my palm all those years ago! Rights of Passage (southern Spain)
Table Manners for Eating Noodles (Japan)]]
Gelato - As It Once Was (Milan, Italy)
The Dance of the Scorpions (Durango, Mexico)
Irish Black Gold (Ireland)
Travels in the Company of P38 (Israel and Egypt)
Displaced on the Spanish Plain (Avila, Spain)
Where Europe Ends (northern Norway)
Blushing Onions and Therapy by the Sea (Brittany, France)
Lovestruck in Leningrad (Russia)
Seeing Red in the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria, Spain)
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Bay of Biscay (Atlantic Ocean, west of France and north of Spain)
A Ride into the Shadow Underworld (Jogjakarta, Indonesia)
The Mystery of a Nudge in the Night (Arctic Circle, Norway)
Birdsong (Rome, Italy)
The Village of Cloves (Sulawesi, Indonesia)
The Misadventure of a Goose (Norfolk, United Kingdom)
The Last Wood Turner (Toledo, Spain)
A Long Shot (Java, Indonesia)
Senior Moments in Segovia (Spain)
Rights of Passage
W e hear the patrol boat before we see it. A motoric throb resonates from deep within the sea mist. White swirls wrap the dark-pitted peaks of Morocco as they float upwards, mysterious and intangible in the distance.
Their presence reaches out to us, fourteen kilometres away, where we sit on a Spanish beach, scanning the sky with binoculars for specks—specks that could turn out to be honey buzzards, rare black storks or multi-coloured bee-eaters—any bird of passage with wings of courage to make the short dash over the stomach-churning straits between Europe and Africa in search of a warmer winter on another continent.
Atlantic meets Mediterranean here: one grey-wild and frothy, the other blue and volatile. But high above the clashing seas, no birds are making the crossing today. The giant fin whales also eluded us on our boat trip yesterday. No spurting blows or surface-lying logs eyeing us curiously. Those juggernauts of the sea had passed silently through the deep trench beneath us.
Only the high-spirited dolphins tumbled around our dancing boat, their airborne bodies curling in delight as queasy passengers on the deck leaned seawards to part with their breakfast. We were hoping to see more than this.
Instead, this afternoon we hear the patrol boat, see its sleek black body emerge briefly in a mist-free window before it speeds off towards the African coast. Then more sound—the slapping of helicopter blades as one dips down out of the sky onto Las Palomas—the Isle of Doves. Barely an island, this rocky outcrop marks the southernmost point of continental Europe.
Yesterday evening we walked the kilometre-long causeway linking it to Tarifa on the mainland, halting at its padlocked gate. Frustrated, we stood and peered through the bars. Around us on the sea, exuberant kite surfers swooped and raced, the Levante wind whipping them into the air and across the waves in wild ecstatic joy.
Las Palomas was once a military fort, the guidebook said. In recent times, a detention centre for ‘illegals’—mostly young African men, washed ashore in collapsed rubber dinghies. Full of hope, they have spilled out onto the sands of a New World.
An air of secrecy hangs over the fort now. A concealed compound lies at its centre—there, we can just make out some low abandoned barrack buildings, visible only with binoculars from the beach. But perhaps they are not altogether abandoned. Earlier, an unmarked white delivery van crossed the causeway and was admitted through the gates. It left soon afterwards, the closing metal clanking heavily behind it.
Now we turn our binoculars on the helicopter; noting its stiff tail and bulbous cockpit eye. Inside, its belly is crammed with shadowy human outlines. Impossible to say how many. It descends onto the island disappearing into the dark heart, blade noise muffled into silence.
We sit, watching, waiting, and squeeze the soft white sand between our toes. The waves, dark with seaweed, quietly lap and curl gently towards us.
Suddenly, the sound of the helicopter reverberates across the water once again. Lighter now with its cargo discharged, it rises like an aggravated insect, before disappearing back into the mist.
We put away our binoculars and look back at the sea, troubled, but knowing we can breathe the salt