From my diary

Happy New Year to everyone who reads this blog!  May it be a prosperous and successful year for us all!

We stand on the first step of the year.  There are 364 more steps until we get to this place again!  So… it’s the time to decide just what we want to do with the year.

Last year I was busy working, so I didn’t really make any plans, and certainly didn’t put them into execution.  So my year passed mainly in working, looking for work, and sleeping!  Ouch!  That’s what happens to us, unless we make plans.

Long ago my family lived in Cyprus for two years.  I’d like to go back.  If I’m not working in February, as may well be the case, then I might go out and spend a week there.  I owe my interest in antiquity to that stay.  I was only a boy, but I remember Roman cities and crusader castles in the hills.  I remember camping in the ruins of the city of Salamis.  Nothing gives a sense of the reality of the ancient world like swimming in the blue water over huge blocks of worked stone lying on the sandy sea-bed, a few feet below.  Doubtless the coast is more built-up, but it would be interesting to see it again!

It’s always a good motto to “grab a chance, and you won’t be sorry for a might-have-been”.  I’m glad that I visited Libya in 2006 and 2007.  We can’t do that now!  I’m glad that I saved my pennies and booked a flight on Concorde, just for the experience of flying at Mach 2.2.  Again, we can’t do that now.  I regret the injury that prevented me going to Syria in 2010 and looking at the then intact temples and colonnades of Palmyra.  Carpe diem: seize the day.

I’d like to go to Sudan.  But it looks as if a civil war is in progress at the moment. Oh well…

I think I will go to Bath, this year, and see the remains of Aqua Sulis there.  Apparently the hot spring-fed Roman baths are unsafe to bathe in, however – a recent bather caught meningitis!  This is a pity.

So there’s much to think about!

Happy New Year again!

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One thought on “From my diary

  1. If you have visited Cyprus and liked it, i suggest you visit Rhodes, in spring or in summer preferably. It has many medieval castles as well. Have a happy and creative 2019.

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