I’ve just discovered a travel writer who has the potential to surpass Paul Theroux as my favourite. Jeffrey Tayler lives in Russia and is married to a Russian, but unlike most of his fellow Americans is an accomplished linguist, is willing to undergo hardship and danger. He’s also willing to accept that America does not hold all the answers. He’s travelled widely in Africa, but his main love is his adopted homeland, its rivers and empty wilderness.
In his element with corrupt officials, drunken yokels and natural disasters, he has time to ponder on the future of the societies amongst whom he travels. In his latest work, Murderers in Mausoleums, he asks, as he journeys from Moscow to Beijing along depopulated byways, why the inhabitants detest democracy, while loving the free market. Both countries have little experience of democracy and Russia’s cynicism was strenghtened by the upheavals of the 1990s. They would rather have a brutal dictator in charge rather than have a say in the way they are governed. The results of his analysis are a shock for those of us who think the Western system of government is the best way to rule and for those who think the West will continue to determine the fate of the rest of the world.
A different travel writer is Stuart Maconie. (more…)
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The big yawn
Sleep. Children. Adversaries since time began. Like other battle-weary parents across the known universe, I too summon every trick in the book to invoke the big yawn – a child’s involuntary intake of breath that precedes the slow, serene glide into deep, marshmallow slumber.
Fresh ammunition came my way recently courtesy of Gecko Press’s The Big Yawn. Whilst the tiger and the hedgehog play chess, tiger yawns, setting off a chain of events so unstoppable that all in the zoo succumb. A weapon of mass pandiculation? Victory would be swift!
Eagerly I put the adversary in bed. Eagerly she listened. Not far in, the eyes droop, the attention wavers and yes, blissful sleep comes.
I wake to a voice: “Daddy, turn the page”.
My weapon had backfired! I lost it before the donkeys had brushed their teeth. I think it must have been the illustrations that kept my adversary alert – how else could she resist? Honestly, they are so good that the two-and-a-half year-old sleepless one spotted every detail and was amused for ages, whereas my adult brain just followed orders. Yawn. Yawn. Sleep.
So the snore wars continue, now with stories on CD. The Big Yawn is indeed a powerful and worthy weapon, just be careful where you aim it!
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