Two down in Ten days

I have this thing- this ambition- to read the classics. Those oft-quoted books that have turned a literary corner, set a new benchmark, or stand out as the origination or last remnants of some form of enlightenment. As a 22 year old, in all honesty, I’m not doing too well.

Under my belt I’ve, up to now, turned the last page of: 1984, Animal Farm, Pride and Prejudice, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies, Beyond Good and Evil, Utopia, On Liberty, and a couple more that hide from memory. A pretty short list, I know.

But low and behold, since a few days before Christmas, I’ve managed to finish two classics on my list. Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, and Nietzsche’s ‘Why I am so wise’.

Morocco Hitch: The Verdict

In the end the hitchhike took us (thee of us) 21 lifts, or in timescales, one week. We traveled from London to Portsmouth, took the overnight ferry (only £19 with LD Lines!) to le Havre, and hitched Southward through Rennes, Bordeaux, San Sebastian, Vitoria, Madrid, Seville, and finally to Tarifa.<p>

I have to say something about Tarifa though, as this is a town that didn’t even appear on my map! We were on our way to Algeciras when the Spanish surfer ‘dude’ who was giving us a lift told us that he can drop us off at Tarifa, where we could catch ‘cheap ferry: Spain to Tangier’. As soon as we arrived in the town, I knew that one day I would have to go back to spend some time there.

As soon as you arrive, it feels like you’re in Spain’s own Newquay. Surfers, windsurfers and power-kiters pack the beaches (this was in April, remember!), and in the town centre, there are surf shops, ‘kite lesson’ shops, and bohemian looking bars in all directions. And what’s more, it’s hardly been touched by the Brits! Maybe next summer…

‘This was supposed to be fun. That’s all it ever was!’

The idea for The Burgeoning Bucket List was borne, pretty much, from this here film (The Bucket List). As IMDB says pretty succinctly, ‘Two terminally ill men escape from a cancer ward and head off on a road trip with a wish list of to-dos before they die.’

Granted I’m not terminally ill, nor am I escaping from anything other than the potential regret I might feel when I’m knocking on the sut laden doors of Lucifer’s hellish idea of a home.

I could drone on for eternity about how ‘this is our only life’, ‘we only get one shot’ and the rest of those melancholic clichés, but I’d only be repeating what’s been drilled into those of us who’ve glimpsed any one of the millions of ‘inspirational’ posts of the blogosphere out there. Better than any words I could type onto this page, and, I fear, better too than most people could,  this video (from the makers of South Park) blithely, sprightly, and buoyantly sums up exactly what this Burgeoning Bucket List is all about.

It’s my way of singing, and dancing, while the music is being played.

R, x