there have been a few times in my life when i have seen death. there was my dear grandmother who passed shortly after i returned from leading on a holiday programme in waitarere in my early twenties. my family had been staying, as we were accustomed, is waikanae about 10 minutes from one of the smoothest mini ramps i ever laid wheels on. we heard granny was ill but, as i remember, we reached the hospital shortly after she passed. i never thanked my father for taking me in to see her. it must have been an uneasy choice for him to do so but it really helped my come to terms with what happen. she looked as beautiful as she always did.

then, when jenny and i were in india in 2000 we visited the wonderful varanasi. i say wonderful hoping that none of you have actually been there to correct me. the place is a shambles. old as heck. falling down. of all my memories of india too many are from varanasi. i remember narrow alleys, monkeys in our hotel including a real cutie who slid down the banister like ben might one day, i hope. the ganges runs through varanasi and therefore it is the scene of unusual festivals and ironies. like people washing and swimming in the stuff. i needn't add it is so polluted its just not funny anymore. i can't work out the religious significance of getting into such a grim stretch of water to become clean. maybe there are as many weird twists in my own faith. i just can't see them. like the gangetic dolphin. we didn't see them either although we tried. what we did see was a burning ghat. a place where a pyre burns constantly to consume the bodies of those who die locally or who are brought to varansi especially. a hindu, and others, would say it is a delightfully special place to die. that would explain the hospices full of the dying around the city and maybe even the terrible driving. our final night in india was in varanasi before we headed off to nepal. for the sake of being factual, we did have another week in delhi afterwards before flying into london. i remember seeing the bodies being carried around on stretchers and placed on the fire. i saw a leg nearly fall off the burning wood.

twice now i have been to egypt. i hope to go again and maybe even again after that. jenny and i went ages ago when our plans to go to the usa fell through. had that not happened my love of deserts might not of been born. we darted around and managed to cover  sinai, alexandria and of course cairo. there is a spectacular museum in cairo. it doesn't look flash but the collection of ancient bits in there is exhausting. statues, pots, mummies and other miscellania. i liked the mummy room the best. not only because it was a little cooler than the rest of the museum but because there lying in glass cases are the bodies of ancient egyptian rulers, like ramses. it's amazing. you can see their faces and hair and bones. really. from memory there are six mummies in that room. its got to be one of the most fascinating places on earth. i went there a couple of years later with my older brother matthew. the buzz had not diminished. think about it. ramses. just lying there.

jenny had an unfortunate experience the other day as she dropped her father and stepmother off at the airport in dubai after a brief yet special stay with us. they passed a place that had eariler been the host of a fatal accident. details are not required. you can imagine it and the needlessness of it. it's shocking.

last night jenny and i went on a date. we left ben with a good friend for the night and made our way down, after tea, to dubai to watch aerosmith play live at the exiles rugby ground. they looked frightening. a word i have not used yet in this posting despite the subject. they sounded fantastic. fanbloodytastic. kicking off with love in an elevator and ending with walk this way. it was a great great show. a relaxed yet massive crowd was there and we were pleased to be near the back as it was stickily hot and it would have been gratuitous to rub arms and faces with people who, among other things, had been drinking budweiser and were sweating as recklessly as us.

at last we have our flight e-tickets to get back to new zealand. we arrive on the white cloud on the twenty third of june. we'll make it to hamilton, new plymouth and wellington. we regret not being able to make it to auckland or melboure :(

saying that, we will feel close to home in two weeks becasue we head to the movenpick hotel in dubai to watch dave dobbyn play some songs.