macliam

[macliam]

Now based in "Sylly Suffolk", I seem to have been moving eastwards all my life - but I hope to change that in the next year or two and fly south. I was a temporary resident in London (only 19 years) before moving here to avoid the millenium bug (remember that?!!)

"European" by birth, marriage and inclination but with a deep-rooted distrust of anything recommended by politicians and run by bureaucrats. I love language, history and culture (by which I mean the actual things people think and do, rather than ballet or opera) and my nightmare is to catch a train in London and get off in Athens or Riga without noticing any difference!

Always interested in saving a bit and eking out my shrinking salary in an attempt to claw back part of the £7.5k the banks have cost every adult in the UK.

[duke]

Welcome macliam.

[Usa123]

Hi

[blythburgh]

Sorry, mi, amigo, I forgot to welcome you to the wonderful county of Suffolk, like you I moved north east to get here. And welcome to the forum.

'.im indoors was in the Merchant Navy as a young man and was told "see the world while you can before it gets spoilt". Very true words. Now there are now many places where you cannot buy a Coke or MacDonald's. And now people go to far flung countries and never even really see it. They go to a glorified Holiday Camp and never leave it to see the glories outside of it. The real place is hidden from them, the good, the bad and the inbetween bits are never seen. Thankfully for him he took advantage of going on many trips when his cruise ship docked. (He was originally in a cruise ship but later changed from Steward to working on in the engine room of a tanker.) And he made sure he got to know the non British crew members. One group of Malaysians taught him one Malaysian phrase. It was many years later before he discovered just what he had learned. He knew the phrase in Malaysian but never knew the correct English words for the phrase. He was asking them for a kiss. These devout Muslims took delight in a young Englishman asking them for a kiss. ALthough they never did as he asked.

[macliam]

As said, the world is smaller and has been corrupted by tourism and commerce.
In 1981 I flew to Agadir in Morocco - it had been rebuilt after an earthquake in the 60's and was now like ANY mediterranean resort. I hated it and remember asking on the first evening "Where do the Moroccans live?" and found it was in a town some 8Km away.
Disaster? Not really, within 2 days I had met up with some people and we hired a car and drove (with 2 Moroccan friends) into the desert and then back through the Atlas mountains to Marrakech (which was already commercialized ) and back to the coast. It was my spiritual awakening - I had never seen miles and miles of absolute nothingness before! I was also amazed at the kindness and the openness of the Berber people I met. So many, many memories of what was only 8 days in my life.
The fathest place we stayed was a small town called Erfoud. There was no hotel (just a Moroccan guest house), the electricity and water went off at 2000 until 0800 and the only sign of "outside" life was a Mercedes Land Cruiser. Now they run coach tours to it and you can fly Ryanair to Marrakech for the weekend.

[roger]

I’ve been rather remiss in not saying ‘Welcome’ to new members so let me make up for it now. As others have said, the forums are good entertainment value and well as being occasionally informative. The cashback is certainly comparable with elsewhere and, who knows, those shares could be worth something in 5 or 10 years time.