Oh, what a pain flu' is...but Malaria is so much worse.

It makes even posting memorable photos a pain in the butt... now, a week or so later having had confirmed that I am not suffering from malaria, I can rest assured it is nothing worse than a debilitating dose of grippe...

Some of the earlier fevers were particularly nasty and had been accompanied by weird, and some quite horrible, dreams. I thought I was delirious as I burned up with skin hot to the touch. Once, the disturbing sound of my telephone broke through my painful sleep only for me to be caught by a cold sales call from a charity whose complaints were falling upon my deaf ears. It was not their time.




I determined this year I should support some of those children in a part of Africa recently visited, where malaria is still a major threat and where small African children die needlessly.

Despite malnutrition, dirty water, HIV/AIDS, general disease and wars and other tribal and territorial strife, malaria succeeds in killing an African child every 45 seconds.

Yet, £3 will buy a new mosquito net impregnated with an insecticide that will give a child a fighting chance.

All I have to do really is to buy more than a few, and to maybe pass around that knowledge and ask others to try and do the same.

So, anyone passing here, if you like these photos of a beautiful, strong winged, majestic eagle and you have a mind to help, please send some money to a charity that helps provide mosquito nets for those underprivileged kids that might die without them.

www.christianaid.org

You may not be a Christian, I'm not but they'll accept my money and so I'm sure they'll accept yours too...

Thanks.

African Fish Eagle on a small island in the Chobe river which separates the two beautiful countries of Botswana from Namibia.

memories of chobe safari

This is the elephant in the room.

This wonderful animal plodded gently through the brush of what is part of Botswana's Chobe National Park. It quietly approached our vehicle with outstretched trunk sensing the air, sniffing for smell of threat. Our driver and guide, Lucky, had told us not to speak, not to make a sound or sudden movement. We could easily scare this elephant although we were all petrified in any case and it may well feel threatened and therefore charge. It's eyesight being bad as with all elephants it had to come close to investigate and once it was positioned in front of us, I felt able to take this shot of the right eye.

Look deep within it. Such a lovely brown. Soft and almost welcoming perhaps. Trusting.

She stood close and still for a few moments and then slowly moved off. All the while several other elephants had passed by, on both sides of our vehicle. Some ignoring us, some stopping momentarily and sniffing for scent, others to pull vegetation with a trunk's end and a snap of the root. Others had no sense of concern and crashed noisily through the trees and brush, and in between the legs of some the smallest and less sure footed babies stumbled, vainly making a grab for mum's tail.

I didn't time how long we sat there quietly watching as elephants from several matriarchal groups passed us by, but as we independently counted in small groups we agreed between us that we had been passed by a few thousand. A small fraction of the 140,000 odd that live in Botswana.

A most beautiful country and long may it be so.

Hadouk Trio Hi Jazz Hijaz

Yaron Herman performs at CosmoJazz Festival Chamonix, 28 July 2010

Back in July, I felt like I needed a day off... shoulders were hurting from strimming steep slopes and holding hedge cutters higher than I should have. It had been quite hot and I hadn't been down to the lake for a swim and I was becoming frustrated...

Mrs, P said to me as she walked out the door at 6am to catch the 6.15 train to work... "go on, go, enjoy it...sod it...take the day off"

And so an hour later I was speeding along the autoroute A40 towards Chamonix with the mountain top of Mont Blanc shining in the summer sunshine down the valley. Once I had arrived and parked up by the téléphérique for the Aiguille du Midi, slung my pack over my arm and walked towards the lift station ticket desk, I saw an enormous snaking queue around the forecourt and tail back towards the tunnel I had just walked through. A couple of people clothed in T-shirts proclaiming CosmoJazz Festival Chamonix told me I might just make the concert en haut, but it was as likely as not that I wouldn't. However, across the valley on the other side, other concerts were about to take place and I could easily get there in time; besides, the Brévent lift was under far less pressure of people wanting to ride up and so thanking them I walked across town, buying a couple of croissants on the way and soon found myself, lift ticket in hand, at the head of the line for the télécabine to Belvédère Planpraz.

At about 2000m altitude, that's 6000 feet in proper money, I settled down to watch and listen to an excellent solo piano concert by Yaron Herman who had only walked off a Marseille stage at midnight the previous night and been driven directly north to Chamonix for this free concert. After only a few hours sleep Herman climbed on stage, settled over the keys of what lloked to me like a baby grand piano and seemed lost in his solo. He played like that for over an hour and a half.

As he left the stage at the end of his concert I climbed higher above the seated audience, and found a space to picnic and lean back against a rock and wait to discover the wonderful sound of the Hadouk Trio...

This is part of what I heard...

Working Class Hero by John Lennon

If ever there was a working class hero to me, it would have to be Lennon.

As a kid growing up in Britain in the 1960's there were not many heroes who were not musicians, singers; 'pop stars'. The youths that made up these groups were seen as rebels, they acted for some part like rebels, but unlike Lennon, they did not all know how to take on the authorities and start to assert their own authority on the next generation yet to rise.

I remember arriving at school one day with a copy of Lennon's "A Spaniard In The Works". Most of it I didn't understand at first, but with assistance from an interested and enlightened teacher, who made me stand in front of class and read some of Lennon's poems, I began to see more in what he wrote, where he was poking fun but at the same time being critical and forthright.

At the time it was probably my first exposure to satire.

So for that John Lennon, thanks. And I wish I could say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Venetian steps...

High pitched stiletto click clack heels across
high pitched mosaic steps of Basilica floor...

Low pitch rumble of deep whispers of the hard of hearing
breaks the sound of the hurrying nuns
requesting;
hats off,
back packs lodged,
ice cream exited,
flash prego?

The inner sanctum turnstile grinds and
greets the oohs and the aahs of the those;
without guides who know it all.

Venetian Panamas

Jack Daniel's... when was 'e a Scot?

Maybe I'm a perfekshunist... I dunno... but I do expect major supermarkets to get it right...

It ain't Scotch, and it is a whiskEy - wiv a Eeeee.........