Well, Happy New Year. The first couple of working days in January are always a bit of a horror especially when outside temperatures are subzero and when the alarm clock goes off you find you set the central heating timer wrongly and the flat is freezing cold. Some people rather nobly give up alcohol in January, which I find truly remarkable. I think such a New Year's resolution would stop me getting out of bed at all. (Feasibly, of course, one could stay in bed and drink there, but I haven't sunk that low yet. Still, there's always next year.)
Anyway, there's plenty to celebrate this month. My book about learning to drive sled dogs in the Yukon, Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, comes out in the US and Canada on January 27th. The UK cold water swimming championships take place on the 24th, which I entered in a moment of bravado. Then the weather turned chilly and I began to have mixed feelings. Then I went to my Monday night swimming club session yesterday to be told that the water temperature at the lido is currently zero degrees. Now there is nothing mixed about my feelings at all. Still, the hot tub afterwards will be nice, I'm sure.
As for my New Year's resolution, I'm giving up looking a wreck. The thing about being a writer is that you sit at home on your own all day, so nobody sees you except for the postman, and that's only on the rare occasions when a parcel arrives and you have to walk to the door and open it. And slowly, over the years, I've found that my standards have slipped to the point where I never go shopping at all, and possess only three items of respectable clothing (and one of those has sewn-up holes in it). I once read an interview with an author who couldn't get started in the morning unless she was properly dressed and had her lipstick on. I have suffered many setbacks as a writer, but not being able to work without lipstick has never been one of them.
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| And the winners are... |
Andy Wolton is the winner of December's travel-writing competition - he submitted a piece on a three-week trek through Nepal. Read Andy's entry here. I particularly liked his observation that 'the less there is to look at, the more there is to see'. I've found that myself, when I've just been standing in front of a vast landscape - I can't pinpoint exactly what it is I'm staring at, but I can't tear my eyes away.
Andy wins the Bradt guide of his choice. Entries are now open for the January competition. Just email me with the story of your most bizarre or most beautiful or most battering travel experience, in 500 words or less. For more lengthy instructions, click here.
The winner of my newsletter draw, meanwhile, is Allan Nedrow in California where, I believe, it is warm and sunny - unlike here. Allan wins a signed copy of Kiwis Might Fly.
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In the press
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Take a look at the winter issue of Traveller magazine, which has just hit the shelves. The magazine approached me asking me to write some words to go with the wonderful photographs of Canada's far north taken by Norman Rich (you can check out the photos here). I looked at the photographs and immediately recognized many of the incredible panoramas from and around the Dempster Highway, which runs for nearly 800 rather bumpy kilometres from Dawson City in the Yukon to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. As it happened, I had driven the road - which has to be one of the most scenic road trips in the world - just weeks previously, and writing the piece was a really enjoyable piece of reminiscence for me. I've put a scan of the article on my website.
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And Did Those Feet
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My friend Charlie Connelly (who I visited in Dublin in November - see the column to the right) has a new book out this month, titled And Did Those Feet: Walking Through 2000 Years Of British And Irish History. It's all about, well, it's about Charlie on his feet walking through Britain and Ireland retracing historic routes (Boudicca, King Harold, Bonnie Prince Charlie and their ilk). Of course, he has his own adventures along the way. As if that weren't enough, And Did Those Feet is Book of the Week on Radio 4 this week. As I'm writing this on a Tuesday afternoon, you've already missed the first two installments. But tomorrow's hits the airwaves at 9.45am, and if you miss that, or if you live in a place that British radio waves can't reach, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_week.shtml for the internet Listen Again version. And check out Charlie's website at www.charlieconnelly.com.
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This month at PollyEvans.com
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Dublin
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Recessions are ugly, but it's possible to find bright spots. One of these was the cost of my journey to Dublin a few weeks back to visit my fellow travel writer and friend Charlie Connelly: Ryanair was running an offer that brought the return flight, inclusive of all taxes, down to just £18, and EasyBus was running an offer which meant that my journey to and from the airport cost just £4 return.
It was a source of some shame to me that I'd never, before this trip, set foot in Ireland. And my consternation was even greater when I realized, on arrival, that I had no idea whatsoever about Irish history. I'd gathered that there'd been a famine - I think they taught us about it in school - and that lots of Irish had, as a result, gone to America. But being a British school, they missed out the equally messy and unpleasant stuff about the Irish struggle for independence, and Ireland's subsequent civil war.
Still, the gaps are somewhat filled now, if only in a weekend-tourist kind of a way. Charlie escorted me to the bus stop and together we rode into town where he pointed out historical landmarks such as the post office where the 1916 uprising began. He also pointed me in the direction of Kilmainham Gaol, which played its own macabre role in the independence movement. And then he found me a comfortable bit of sofa from where to watch the DVD of Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which covers those events in a truly heart-rending and horrifying way.
Charlie also took me to the Book of Kells (very very very old and beautiful manuscript in Trinity College), and to the Bonavox hearing aids shop from which U2's Bono took his name (see the picture below).
Oh yes, and of course we had to go to lots of pubs, drink Guinness (it really does taste better in Dublin, I discovered) and listen to Charlie playing his ukelele (below).
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