The Pure Life of Dreams

December 21, 2025December 21, 2025

On My Way to Guatemala Via Dhaka

I was on my way to the capital of Guatemala via Dhaka but I couldn’t recall seeing the name of the city.

‘It ends with “tengo” I think,’ I said to the man sitting beside me in the bus. The man was blonde though he was from Bangladesh and he was irritated at the fact that I had squeezed in next to him.

I had missed the first bus, because I was delayed from leaving the first plane. Then at passport control I had had to shift through four of my passports before finding the right one.

‘You only need to bring one,’ snapped the officer as she flicked through its pages. The woman stamped my passport and handed me a small grey ticket for the bus to the other airport.

‘Church,’ she grunted.

I pushed through the entrance to a building that led to the bus terminal.

By the time I arrived at the bus the other Westerners had left. I looked up at the next bus, a shabby green double decker with a heavy solid grey staircase that led up to the top deck.

‘Is this the right one?’ I asked up at a man who stood at the entrance.

He called down to me. ‘There is no more room?’ He asked. Then he repeated his question to the driver.

‘Which bus do I take?’ I continued, and I held up my ticker. ‘Church?’

‘Yes, this is Church,’ he replied and I ascended the stairs and pushed into the bus and that was when I finally sat down next to the blonde Bangladeshi.

The bus pulled out from the terminal as I clutched my daypack. I looked around in a slight panic. My rucksack and computer bag were missing.

The bus began its long drive through the dusty city. It confirmed my expectations that Dhaka was a noisy dusty place.

Did taking the bus from one airport to another qualify as my having visited Bangladesh? I wondered.

As we drove away from the city and into the countryside we passed some villages. I pulled out my phone to take pictures. I zoomed in on two woman who sat at stools outside their hut and snapped them from behind.

Then I turned to the blonde man to confirm whether I was on the right bus.

‘Is the next stop Paris?’ I asked. ‘Before we get to Tengo?’

The man harrumphed at me and turned away as if to say ‘No, it isn’t.’ I looked at him, at his short blonde bangs and his pallid profile with his hooked nose.

He was ugly, I decided. Or was I just being racist?

Photo by Nahid Sultan via WikiMedia Commons.

November 17, 2025November 17, 2025

European Taxi Drivers are Crazy when Driving in Reverse

It started after the first stop of our vacation, the stop after our visit to Trastevere in Rome.

We got into a taxi and before long we coming up towards Monaco. We were at the top of the hill on the way to our hotel in town. But we were driving backwards.

May 19, 2025May 19, 2025

Paradise by Plane

We are on a huge military cargo plane going back to the UK when, through the opening in the back where the hatch opens out for the parachute soldiers to jump, I see a beautiful ocean view, with sparkling blue waters and a whale bouncing in an and out the water parallel to a coastline.

I am not usually excited by whale sightings, but this whale continues jumping in and out of the water, and even though it is far down below us, the sparkling water and the sandy coast make for a paradise.

‘Look, a whale!’ I cry out to my fellow passengers.

As the planes rumbles on it appears to descend and the view becomes clearer.

‘Maybe they are dolphins,’ I declare, and sure enough, there are schools of them bouncing in and out of the sparkling waters, swimming north up the coast line, and coming nearer into view as the plane descends,.

Our plane comes to land at an idyllic outcrop – an unexpected break point in our return flight. We file out and walk along a narrow path along a sandy road, with beachfront restaurants to our left, and shop-seller stalls to our right. The place seems foreign to what I have seen before but magical too. Maybe it is Moslem or Caribbean, I cannot tell from the coloured stripes and robes of the shopkeepers.

‘What is this place?’ I ask a tourist in a white bucket hat sitting in a restaurant to my left.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, and I think, How can you not know?! You’re here, aren’t you?

I continue on, and stop at a stall to ask the proprietor. ‘What country am I in?’ I ask.

The woman replies, ‘We’re in Africa.’ But Africa is a continent, I think.

Then I reach down to a small black girl by the woman’s side and ask again, ‘Where are we?’

The girl looks up and says to me, ‘You are in Ecuador,’ and I think how marvellous.

I must tell Siobhan that we have to go to Ecuador proper, and not just for a stopover. Never mind if Quito is high up in altitude, it will surely be good for her if we only stay for a short time.

Then the airline stewards lead us to our restaurant which is on an island off the sandy coast. We step into the water until we are up to our necks, and I pull out my iPhone so it won’t get wet. I lift the phone above my head but too late, I have to shake the water off it.

The phone will be alright, I think. I’ll take it back to the airplane and leave it there, because I don’t need it while we are here, in paradise, on this island.

Photo by Pauchok via GoodFon.com.

July 12, 2024July 12, 2024

Ethiopian Theater and the Hidden Stage

It was night already as the bus bumped its way through the town of old Addis Ababa.

I was with Liam at the back. The open windows allowed us to peak out onto dim lit streets, street seller stalls dotted along the sidewalks, open spaced parks with meandering iron-post lamps followed their paths.

Liam and I had gone off to take a nap in the sleep house while Lizzie and Siobhan separately went shopping. But now we had to join them to see the play at the old theater.

I held Baby Liam in my arms on the bus and together we looked out through the windows of the bus.

And once we arrived at the old theater building there was already quite a crowd.

The building was yellow with red lined Ethiopian text above the huge double oak doors which also had red lined trim. The text was embossed against the flat of the wall.

The steps leading up to the doors were packed with people jostling to get in.

I spotted Lizzie, she was half way up the steps, and I called ahead to her. I knew that we had seats up in the balcony but we had to get the tickets first.

“We’re here. You got the tickets?” I yelled over to her and unexpectedly, she turned when she heard me.

Lizzie spread the tickets out in her hand, four of them, like they were a tarot deck, shiny and dark green and she reached over to us with them, as we pushed our way up the steps.

The four of us passed through the doors and together we climbed the stairs to the balcony.

All the seats were covered in white sheets, apart from a kid’s size wicker chair that was positioned in the aisle, next to our row. The chair was painted red and brown and must have been for the porter.

At the front there was a cream colored curtain and no view, apart from a slit at foot level were you could peak through to the ceiling of the stage.

Siobhan started complaining about the view.

“It’s the same with everyone,” I told her but the porter indicated the wicker chair for her if she wanted.

“I don’t want that!” she complained again.

We inched along our row, some three rows back from the front. Baby Liam went first and then myself, followed by Lizzie and Siobhan.

Liam was fussing by the time we were all seated. He sat next to an elderly couple who were sat by the wall. They wore brown turbans and long white jellabas and, on their robes, he sprayed grey felt pieces that he’d found from somewhere. They were from the seat cushions, I thought, as he continued to break apart more felt.

In front of us, from the balcony roof, were suspended ornate dark wooden lamps. They were unlit, and instead the balcony sconces were on.

“Liam is going to have swap places,” I called over to Siobhan.

“Why?” She was irritated.

“He’s making a mess with the couple next to him.”

So Liam and Lizzie swapped places just as the lights dimmed.

The cream colored curtain rose, and with it were raised the orchestra and the stage, so that both were directly in front us. The orchestra in front of the stage, a magnificent entrance.

And the view was perfect apart from where the cellist and the stringed instruments sat, where the tops of their instruments poked above the floor of the stage.

Then the musicians started up a low dirge but I wasn’t sure how long we would last.

I mean it wasn’t Broadway or the West End.

Photo by Steffen Wurzel via WikiMedia Commons.

June 7, 2024June 7, 2024

Business Trip Abuse

Ricky G, Pete Bossman, Johnny Two Shoes and I are sitting outside at a large circular table drinking beers, Ricky to my left, Johnny to my right, Pete opposite. And Johnny is complaining about how people abuse the business trips.