New Statesman -- foreign travel -- July 5 deadline
 

The Tesco vouchers for Basil Ransome-Davies this week. Hon menshes for Mary McLean, Martin Rocek, and me, and two for Brian Allgar, I believe. (He's certainly Alban Girral, and I think he's also Sylvia Smith. My apologies if I'm mistaken about that. Also if I've omitted anyone's name. The hon mensh roll is rather extensive, and I may have missed someone.)

There seem to be some typos on this week's comp page. For example, among the hon mensh proverbs, surely it's many hands that need many gloves.

No 4234 Set by Leonora Casement
We want emails, letters, even (wordy) postcards from a friend travelling abroad, which make you thankful you didn’t go. Herewith an example of an entry that won this comp in the 1950s: “Peace, perfect peace! The monastery is 15,000 feet above sea level . . . some of [us] troubled with headaches and nose bleeding . . . I never felt better . . . Strict monastic routine for all! No talking except for 45 minutes after morning service (4am) and then only Latin . . .”
Max 150 words by 5 July comp@newstatesman.co.uk

(I've fixed the email address for submissions. Sorry about the error.)

Guilty as charged - Sylvia Smith is my sister.

Congratulations to everyone!

I see they're still exhuming bodies from the 50's ...

My favorite treatment of this is by Thurber. The most-quoted line is the postillion-struck-by-lightning, but the one about the porter always cracks me up.

Frank

That Thurber piece is hilarious. But if you're thinking about entering the phrase-book competition, that deadline is next week, the 28th. For the off-putting descriptions of foreign travel comp, the deadline is a week later.

Thanks, Chris. I'm thinking about them both - but since that's all I'm doing, perhaps it's just as well I posted on the wrong thread.

I loved the Thurber, Frank. I don't remember having read that one before.

Susan

Actually, I find the description of the monastery quite appealing. Especially the Latin!

A Card from Detroit


Cheers to all the family from vibrant downtown Detroit! We once had to prep ourselves for Maccu Picchu, but our Motor City training was even more exciting: crawling under machine gun wire, leaping water holes and hand to hand cutlery combat. Of course the twins, John and Jimmy, adored it. (Only Jimmy lost an absolutely integral member.) I do think for next month's crop of tourists the tour guides should opt out of the pre-dawn Zulu chants. Sleep is vital and I found, personally, the ululations gave my acid reflux quite a toggle. We did try awfully hard to see Motown's Birth Place but, sadly, it was sand-bagged and not at all green-zoned, as we were promised in the brochure. So the photo of the bullet-riddled plaque honoring Barry Gordon is all we could manage. Martial Law is not something you want to toy with, but during our last glorious days we were lifted out of the doldrums when John was kidnapped by the the Cribs. The SWAT team's precision was to die for.

I tried sending an entry to the address given, but it was rejected as not deliverable (twice). Any further advice, please?

Gail, there is a missing blank in the original posting which makes it look as if 'July' is part of the address. The address should be

comp@newstatesman.co.uk

Thanks for spotting (Gail) and correcting (Brian) my silly typo. (Or was it just an innocent typo? Was it really a sly attempt to nobble the competition? Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?) I hope that anybody who's had trouble sending a submission will try again now that the problem has been fixed.

Many thanks, Brian!

And here's my entry. It's all true, too, except the bit about the Trevi fountain.

Hey friends: You were all wrong about driving in Italy. It's a piece of cake if you have GPS. True, Ms. Garmin tried to send me down a staircase in Siena, and I crossed the Apennines on a series of hairpin curves that beat the most sickening roller coaster ride of my life. I also had to back 300 feet down a one-way street that ended in a cliff in Ancona. But the most fun was in Rome, where I mastered the art of driving on one-lane alleys with cars parked on both sides. Roman drivers are a bunch of wacky cut-ups, but they had to respect me after my dramatic moonlight crash into the Trevi fountain. Fortunately I had collision insurance - don't leave home without it.

The excitement of staying at a historic castle more than makes up for its inconvenience. The view of the mountains is spectacular and I rather like the idea that the nearest village is reachable only by horse-drawn cart. I don't dislike spiders, and as for the rats, they tend to scurry away at the sound of human footsteps. Nor do I mind the occasional bat – speaking of which, one seems to have just flown in through the open window! Our host, an old world gentlemen of indeterminate age, has promised to bring us a bottle from the cellar – although, as he charmingly puts it, he does not drink vine! Here he is! More later…