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In April 2023 we took a package tour to South Africa with our friends Craig and Sonia. We flew via Singapore to Cape Town.
Africa
Southern Africa
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- Category: Africa
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In February 2023 we joined an organised tour to Sri Lanka.
Beginning in the capital Colombo, on the west coast, our bus travelled anticlockwise, in a loop, initially along the coast; then up into the highlands; then north, as far as Sigiriya; before returning southwest to Colombo.
1963 was a pivotal year for me. It was the year I completed High School and matriculated to University; the year Bob Dylan became big in my life; and Beatlemania began; the year JFK was assassinated.
The year had started with a mystery the Bogle-Chandler deaths in Lane Cove National Park in Sydney that confounded Australia. Then came Buddhist immolations and a CIA supported coup and regime change in South Vietnam that was both the beginning and the begining of the end for the US effort there.
Suddenly the Great Train Robbery in Britain was headline news there and in Australia. One of the ringleaders, Ronnie Biggs was subsequently found in Australia but stayed one step of the authorities for many years.
The 'Space Race' was well underway with the USSR still holding their lead by putting Cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for almost three days and returning her safely. The US was riven with inter-racial hostility and rioting. But the first nuclear test ban treaties were signed and Vatican 2 made early progress, the reforming Pope John 23 unfortunately dying midyear.
Towards year's end, on the 22nd of November, came the Kennedy assassination, the same day the terminally ill Aldous Huxley elected to put an end to it.
But for sex and scandal that year the Profumo Affair was unrivalled.
I have reached a point in my life when the death of a valued colleague seems to be a monthly occurrence. I remember my parents saying the same thing.
We go thought phases. First it is the arrival of adulthood when all one's friends are reaching 21 or 18, as the case may be. Then they are all getting married. Then the babies arrive. Then it is our children's turn and we see them entering the same cycle. And now the Grim Reaper appears regularly.
As I have repeatedly affirmed elsewhere on this website, each of us has a profound impact on the future. Often without our awareness or deliberate choice, we are by commission or omission, continuously taking actions that change our life's path and therefore the lives of others. Thus our every decision has an impact on the very existence of those yet to be born.