What's it all about then ?

Back in 1991 Dave Osborne ("Don't call me Dave") and I attended a friend's wedding in the wilds of Cumbria. It was an interesting wedding to say the least. Many of the guests kept sneaking out of the reception to catch a glimpse of the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final on the BBC and the groom seemed to be camped at the bar. I had a funny feeling the marriage wouldn't last long when, between sups of beer and glimpses of Wigan's win over St Helens, the groom said to me "what have I done, what have I done ?" ( see the game here ). 


The other notable event of the day was that as Oz and I got increasingly drunk we decided that we were definitely going to do the oft discussed world tour. Definitely. No putting it off this time. Definitely going. I think Oz told his girlfriend there and then. I'm not sure what Beth's response was but Oz was so drunk he probably didn't hear. Anyway, it obviously didn't harm their relationship as they've been married for almost 17 years now. 


The other big decision that we made that day was to travel down to South Kensington the following weekend and not leave until we'd booked our trip at one of the student travel agents. And that's exactly what we did. And we purchased books of travellers cheques as even in those days bags of shekels or cows to barter were a bit passe. A few days later we'd both resigned from work and we were committed to the trip.


But why am I doing the blog 20 years later? Back in 1991, the web was a sci-fi figment of someone's imagination. Digital cameras didn't exist and neither did mobile phones nor SMS. No ipads, no blogs, no facebook, no twitter, no gmail. Communication with home was via letters and postcards. If you were on the road, your address was Poste Restante at <the next major city you were getting to>. It was a disappointing day when you arrived in a new place and headed over to Poste Restante and found nothing there. 


I kept a small diary during the trip that was recently rescued from the back of a cupboard. I took plenty of photos, first with my 20 quid plastic Boots fixed lens camera that had served me well through several inter-railing trips and then later on with the second hand SLR I bought in Sydney. Film was developed on the road, with varying results, and then snaps were mailed home. When news came back (via Poste Restante) that the snaps had safely arrived then the negatives were sent. All this to try and minimise the risk of losing the memories. 


We left on July 20th 1991 and to celebrate the 20th anniversary I had the mad idea to bring our trip into the 21st Century. If I can stick at this experiment for a year I intend to transcribe my diaries, scan my photos and perhaps add a bit of modern day context to the story. I've got a couple of weeks to play around and get it right though I suspect, that rather like the original trip, I'll just make it up as I go along.


Gary 
3rd July 2011