An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – To Go or Not To Go

 

The Daily Star's front pages have overtaken Private Eye for outrageous humour... and this headline which it splashed on this week really did sum up the situation now facing travellers.

I'm not going on holiday but I'm bound for Ithaca. When work is writing and editing travel articles, who needs a holiday? So for me, it's a no brainer. I have my paperwork to show I'm working and that I've had two vaccinations, and I've filled in my passenger locator form for the Greek government. I've even started packing...

But what about the people who are going on holiday and have booked everything, only to be told that they shouldn't have done? Do they cancel? Or do they go ahead. Either way, they'll be following government advice – and not following government advice.

It's been argued that the mixed messaging from Downing Street is a deliberate exercise in behavioural psychology, designed to confuse and soften up the population to make them crave rules and be more malleable.

Is there really an intelligent plan behind it all? Maybe Dominic Cummings will shed some light on this and much more this week...

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Faith in the Fates

 

No, that's not the UK Cabinet trying to figure out what to do... it's the Fates (as portrayed in the wonderful Disney movie Hercules) measuring out what should happen next...

In fact, you'd probably be better off trusting the latter than the former...

You want an example of the UK government's ability to still send mixed messages and sow confusion?

Travel to Greece has not been banned but we are being told not to go... Add that to being told you can now mix with people indoors but you are advised not to do it...

We've had to put up with this kind of thing right the way through 2020 (see this blog for An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – a day-by-day account from March through to October last year) and we're still having to put up with it in 2021.

Those with essential reasons will – at the moment – be allowed to go to Greece. It's essential for me to go to Ithaca. And I feel increasingly that it's essential for me to get out of the UK for a while at least...

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Burden of Proof

 

Ithaca's greatest advocate... Homer

Last week I was told by my GP practice that if I wanted written proof that I'd had two Covid vaccinations, I would have to hand over £25. That was an offer I found easy to refuse... since I was under the impression that the NHS was going to issue vaccination certificates free of charge.

Today a call to the NHS confirmed that it would send me an official letter of confirmation within five working days. Which will be helpful, since the Greek government is currently asking visitors to provide such proof – and since I'm due to arrive in Ithaca on 1 June.

For those who don't want to pay for a GP letter or wait for a piece of paper from the NHS (or, indeed, bother with having a vaccination), it appears that all the necessary documentation is available – forged – on the internet.

The pandemic seems to be a gift that keeps on giving... to the criminal, the corrupt and the greedy.

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Ithaca Beckons

Odysseus remembered... on Ithaca

Maybe, this blog should turn its thoughts properly towards my odyssey in the second year of the plague.

My first odyssey in the year of the plague (see posts from 2020) ended up producing 70,000 words as I planned and finally made my journey around Greece and Italy in the wake of Odysseus.

As a result of that trip, I now have the honour of working with Jane Cochrane on a new guidebook to Ithaca – with Jane doing all the hard work of writing and research, and me doing the fun bits of walking across Ithaca in the footsteps of Odysseus – guided by Homer.

Sorry again, Greta, but the only way we are going to get to Ithaca is by flying to Kefalonia and taking the ferry from there. 

The flight has been changed twice already due to the shifting Covid situation. So, once more, making it to Ithaca depends on the whim of the gods – and the virus.

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Krakatoa

 

Becalmed on David Abulafia's books about the sea and drifting away from Dante (see previous blogs), I was rescued by a chance encounter with Simon Winchester's Krakatoa, an excellent book that would actually justify some of the hyperbole sprinkled over the covers of The Great Sea and The Boundless Sea.

Winchester's subject matter helps of course... the most cataclysmic explosion known in modern times... the total self-destruction of an island of six cubic miles... a sound that could be heard 3,000 miles away... and deadly tsunamis with waves up to 135ft high...

But it is his journalistic approach to all that led up to the traumatic event of 1883, the very human details of what happened, and the life-changing aftermath that makes this such a fantastic read.

Above all, Krakatoa is an illustration of the immense intelligence of the planet, the fact that human existence hangs by a thread, and the reassurance that nature and its life forces will always be unstoppable.

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Troy Story

 

One of the strangest books I've ever encountered has found its way into my possession.

In Where Troy Once Stood the Dutch writer Iman Wilkens puts forward his case that the fabled city of The Iliad was actually in what is now Cambridgeshire. I'm not making this up... but I don't know about him...

And when it comes to The Odyssey, he locates the Cyclops in the Cape Verde Islands, the island of Aeolus and the realm of Circe in the Netherlands, the Laestrygonians in Cuba, the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis in Cornwall,  Calypso in the Azores, and Ithaca in southern Spain...

Will I be cancelling my trip to Ithaca (an island in Greece) in June to walk in the footsteps of Odysseus once more? Er, I think not... 

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Great Sea

The other problem with The Boundless Sea (see this blog 27 April 2021) is that it's not exactly boundless. The Mediterranean, I soon found (and yes, I should have checked earlier), is completely out of bounds – because it's covered in David Abulafia's companion book, The Great Sea.

The Great Sea sees the same hyperbolists from the cover of The Boundless Sea at it again: Dominic Sandbrook finds it "magnificently satisfying"; and Simon Sebag Montefiore says it's "gripping".

So far, I haven't found it either of these... but it does seem to have a livelier opening than that of The Boundless Sea. And it covers many of the places that I have a passion for, so I'm setting sail in the hope of discoveries that may justify those cover lines...