Bucket Lists

The temple of Poseidon at Sounion - ought to be on everyone's bucket list!

I suppose that 1,000000000 things to do before you die meme has been going for a while, in fact it's so popular it's endlessly referred to as "my bucket list".  I just heard a woman on the radio saying "well, I wanted to do it - it was on my bucket list."   She was talking about the fact that she had stood outside the Sandringham parish church to see the latest princess go to be christened, as a result she got to see the nation's favourite nuclear family all together.  The reverential treatment suggested that this was a rare and cherishable opportunity which would seldom be repeated since the royal parents wanted to guard their children's privacy.  Which leads me to a detour - whatever happened to the Wessex children?  I don't read the celebrity press, but one never hears them mentioned - which has always made me wonder if there's something wrong with them - but, enough of this prurient speculation.

 I was thinking about to what extent I have a bucket list.   Mostly I think it would consist of places I would like to visit.  But I'm also aware that it's a shrinking list, there are plenty of places I don't think I really want to visit...I have slightly gone off the Amazon and Machu Picu, and I've never been bothered about going to Australia.   I have seen the Taj Mahal and Venice and the Acropolis and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I would still like to go to Granada, to Egypt of course, and impossible North African and Near Eastern places like Petra, Damascus and Leptis Magna... and an awful lot more of Greece.  I'd like to go back to some of the Greek cities in Turkey too.  And see more of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and I still haven't had that honeymoon on the houseboat in Kashmir yet  - I wouldn't mind seeing the Hyrcanian forest either.

The Hyrcanian forest - temperate rain forest - rather like Glengariff - once had its own tiger species.  Sadly became extinct in 20thC (?).











Not a terribly unfeasible bucket list - and a lot of this can be done by train too.  Then there are experiences I might like: I would like to go up in a hot air balloon - but then again, what if I got vertigo?  Humiliating.   More rail journeys would be nice - across Europe I think.  And I would like to see more architecture and more art galleries.  And?  Er, well, I can't think of anything else really, which shows what a predictable person I am.  What else is there?  I don't want to take up extreme sports and do adrenalin surging activities.   I would like to try scuba diving though... that's quite appealing... although a bit of a risk of claustrophobia in the mask.  Never got on with snorkelling. I'd quite like to have a short visit to a desert - and well, perhaps I'd like to have a little project - something like 27 things to do before I die, rather than 1,000.

I have always remembered the man I met who was travelling around to see all the sites where English Kings and Queens were buried - I thought that was a good idea (I've seen quite a few without trying,Windsor and Westminster Abbey provide a good range for a start, add in Fontrevault and the Roman tombs of the Stuarts and I must be halfway there).  I could create a little project like that - perhaps visiting all the museums that own paintings by Bosch or Giorgione.  But that probably wouldn't take long.  Is there any real problem about travelling aimlessly?  If you have an agenda doesn't it make it more stressful?  Doesn't it just become box ticking?

Then there are the books - I have been slightly influenced by Alan Bloom's The Western Canon but I've hardly been systematically reading through his list.  I just try not to read really dim books, unless I'm ill. There are a limited number of books I can read, so they might as well be good ones.  I should try and read the rest of Dostoievsky and Proust before I go, and perhaps go to the opera more often. And perhaps more live classical music - although that is tremendously difficult if one doesn't live in a city.  Perhaps "get a flat in London" should be on the list... I doubt whether that is remotely feasible - but I do love the idea of having a teeny bolt hole so I could go and do things.  But that isn't exactly bucket list - that's wildest dreams/aspirations territory.

The other problem with bucket lists, is that everyone else is racing around to fulfill their lists - so when you do get to the Taj Mahal or wherever you find 10,000 other people there.  I have been lucky that I managed to travel a reasonable amount before mass global travel was so intense.  I saw lions and elephants in the wild before one had to line up along with a dozen other jeeps to photograph them - and I've wandered around the Roman forum when it was almost as empty and atmospheric as it was in Gibbon's time.  Now, or at least last time we were there, there were elements of the moronic inferno about it.  Would I really be happier watching it all on tv?  Perhaps the solution is to go to quieter, less over-hyped places - those small towns that have wonderful atmosphere, even if they don't have the greatest "sights" - places like Brescia or Toledo or Vezelay...no, Vezelay is v.v. touristique... At the moment the desire is to go to more of Greece, now that I have conquered the work kolokothukeftedes it is essential that we return to use it as often as possible.

Courgette fritters - sigh!