Bashi-bazouks! I am exhausted! I have been charging round like a maniac this week, though I suspect 99% of people would describe it as ‘going to work’. I’ve had to catch trains at rush hour, sit in an office for hours on end, and even wear a tie (for a talk)! Anyone sympathetic? No, thought not…
Anyway, the busy-ness came from recording the audio version on My Midsummer Morning. Putting the final touches to a book is a weird feeling – okaying the cover, sorting the photos, final scan for typos. It’s a mixture of control freak panic, weary relief, melancholy, and a reckless feeling of I-don’t-care-any-more-Take-this-away-from-me! If you’re an audiobook fan you can pre-order My Midsummer Morning here. In other good book news, Great Adventurers has won the fab Standford’s Children’s Travel Book of the Year award. Alhamdulillah!
Let nobody tell you that any ‘adventure’ is harder than a week of commuter trains and limp sandwiches! I think I’ve earned a lie-down and a good movie binge:
- The pleasingly eccentric and humble Rickey Gates has run every street in San Francisco
- Kilian Jornet ran up Mount Everest. Literally ran up Mount Everest.
- Teenager Ed Pratt went round the world by unicycle. Daft. Well-filmed
- The planet is in crisis – from climate change to the pollution in our oceans and devastation of our forests. It’s up to all of us to fix it. How big is your environmental footprint?
- A podcast I am enjoying: An ongoing series of long-form conversations with pioneers of exploration and discovery. And me, answering questions on ‘why we need adventure’.
- Following the superb crowd-sourced success of my question about adventures for young people from difficult backgrounds, I decided to ask Twitter again. “Which websites / blogs / podcasts / magazines do you go to find out about brilliant journeys that people have taken?”
Any other ideas I should crowd source answers to? - 16 adventures to try before you are 16. How many have you done?How many will you tick off this year?
- Two very different articles that have got me thinking. A list of 25 Principles of Adult Behaviour, and Screw Finding Your Passion.
Finally, let me know where you’re reading this newsletter! Hello to Helen on her horse in Wales, Erik in the Egyptian desert and Chantae in Fiji! You lot don’t know what hard work is. Not like me. I went to an office last week. Yeah.
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