Facebook - An Appreciation

Gosh, I seem to have got back into this blogging lark with a vengeance. One thing that has encouraged me is the reaction from some of my Facebook friends - and I use the word "friends" deliberately.

Once upon a time I looked on Facebook as a way for children to destroy their literary skills even further, imagining the majority of postings along the lines of Soz for bunking skul cuz i wuz w8ing 4 mi gf 2 call lol A couple of friends of mine were playing a game called Farm Town and so I decided to have a quick peek.

I got quite hooked and felt quite happy in my rural idyll. I was curious and interested to read Facebook posts of people I didn't now from all four corners of the world (not that a sphere can have corners but you can't call me pedantic). Well, actually you can insofar as it is physically possible if not ............. ah, I'm being pedantic aren't I? Anyway, I read sensible posts, funny posts, some downright cranky posts and it made me realise that there was a whole new world on Facebook.

I was then introduced to something called Mafia Wars: a game of families and fights where one can undertake tasks, help others and, should one so desire, rob, steal, kill and similarly piss off other players. At first I was reticent about asking perfect strangers to play with me (!) but one needs to liaise to progress. As I joined with other Mafia members I got to recognise names and interact to some degree or other. I got to see people's real life problems, worries, joys and successes as they saw fit to share them and, through that interaction, those names took on shapes. There are people on Facebook of extraordinary generosity whose joy is through helping and to those ...... Joo, Michelle A, Shay L, Bethany D, Marilyn S, Josie D, Mark J among others, I say heartfelt thanks.

Others say little but each day they are there to help and are now familiar names. Susan, David, Sandra, Sparky, Maureen, Barbara, Dolly , Steven .....many, many more. You are all stars.

Finally, there are the special crew whom I knew before Facebook and are my rocks. Kitty, Balders, Janet, Chockie, Lisa, Poblet, Mike, Mel, letsy, Rosey, plausey etc. I love you guys.

For anybody whom I have omitted, you know who you are and you know you are special.

What? I hear you cry, there has been no mention of your dear (but scary) twin sister, Bunty. Of course, she is almost a part of me [;)] and she has provided many a chortle, especially when her muff got infested with moths. Poor love, didn't realise that our American cousins use the word as a euphemism for something totally different!

Maybe I'll leave the last words to her - over to you, Bunty.

Ooh I say, Bertie dear, you've rather caught me on the hop. I'm actually busy helping the village operatic society rehearse for their performance of Cats - I'm rather afraid it sounds like the cats in question are slowly being strangled at the moment but I'm sure it'll be alright on the night. Now, what do you want me to say? Oh, the nice people on Facebook? Yes, well, awfully nice most of them. Get Brunhilde, my PA, to send them all a bottle of sherry. Now, bugger orf, I'm busy, Bless you all, dears.

Bertie's Travelogue Part 8 - Durban to Seychelles

OK, it's a fair cop! It was no coincidence that I happened to hang around in South Africa whilst the World Cup was on. To be honest I would have moved on earlier but I had all these "You give £2 a month to feed the poor in Africa and they use it to buy a f*cking trumpet" t-shirts to get rid of. I had a feeling that they wouldn't sell and eventually ditched them so I was soon able to depart the shores of Africa en route to the mysterious island of Madagascar.

One thing about Durban I must share with you are these chappies; the Zulu rickshaw pullers.

Now, this makes a pleasant change from the decorated transport in our fair land which, at best, can be described as bland. Furry dice, and "Beware, Princess on Board" & "My other car is also a piece of junk" stickers are hardly high art now, are they? Oh, for the days of the tiger tail sticking out of one's petrol tank!

Climbing into my trusty G-BERT and leaving a few rand for my ground crew, I set off across the Mozambique Channel to the town of Toliara, some 800 nautical miles away. It was so nice to be in the air again. - the freedom of the skies and the coastline slowly slipping away as I flew into a clear blue future. Four hours later and the coastline of Madagascar was in sight. The navigation worked!! Antananarivo ATC picked me up and vectored me in for a nice simple landing and I had arrived at last at an island which has always fascinated me.

To be honest, it's nothing like the movie but there you go. Becauseof its unique position, Madagascar has an unsurpassed collection of flora and fauna. Of the 10,000 plant species there, some 90% are found nowhere else in the world whilst the animal life has evolved separately to the rest of the world also - lemurs being a prime example. Tragically, mining and slash & burn foresting techniques are destroying a lot of the irreplaceable habitat and there seems little governmental pressure to limit this. It's estimated that 10% of the original forest habitat remains. Interestingly, only about 45% of the country are Christian with the majority of inhabitants practising Malagasy mythology, a traditional religion which emphasizes the links between living and dead. There is little doubt that the country would be classified as "third world" and it is shunned by many other countries due to the undemocratic nature of its military regime and ongoing civil war. All in all, not the best place in which to hang around.

Toliary itself was not the most exciting place so I decided to press on to the north of the island and the small airport at Sambava before pressing further northwards to the delights of the Seychelles. I paused to collect some of the new currency, the Ariary, which replaced the franc back in 2005. This is all a bit tragic as their banknotes were still influenced by the French ancestry (colonial French notes being predominantly delicate pastel shades and beautiful engraving). Now, the new notes are unprepossessing and dour, emulating how their country is becoming.

OK, off we go to the island paradise that is the Seychelles. A long 7 hour flight with only the sea and my built-in MP3 player for company. I tried my in-flight video camera and, as you can see, the controls aren't quite second nature yet! Still. I made it and that's the main thing.

The Seychelles - 115 islands and historically a transit point for trade between Africa and Asia and named after Jean Moreau de Séychelles, Louis XV's Minister of Finance. Britain nicked them back in 1810 although independence was granted in 1976. In true African style, there was a coup d'etat within a year although the islands has been democratically governed since 1991.

Obviously the islands are beautiful and an Eden for watersports as well the home of giant tortoises and the only flightless bird in the Indian Ocean (the White-Throated Rail). Mind you, who in their right mind would want to leave this paradise? Apparently the treasure of the notorious pirate Olivier de Vasseur (La Buze) is apparently buried somewhere in North Mahé. This is valued at $160,000,000 so I shall be buying a bucket and spade.

One other strange piece of flora peculiar to the Seychelles is the coco de mer, a species of palm indigenous to the islands. It gained a reputation amongst sailors as its floating seed resembles the disembodied buttocks of a woman and they spread wild tales of its origin. Personally, I would have said front bottom was more pertinent.

What think you? Dial 0858 123000 followed by the number 1 for bottom or 2 for whatever euphemism you care to use. I think "daisy" is rather nice. Until the true source of the nut was discovered in 1768, it was believed by many to grow on a mythical tree at the bottom of the ocean. European nobles in the sixteenth century would often have the shells of these nuts polished and decorated with valuable jewels for their own private galleries.

It's undoubtedly a place of magical beauty but I must travel onward. In order to reach the Persian Gulf I need to dog leg back to Africa and the country of Somalia as the straight route is not possible without finding a fuel station on the way. Perhaps I ought to Google "Indian Ocean service stations"?

Off We Go Again!

OK, so it's been a while since I landed in Durban on my round-the-world flight. In my virtual flying world, I spent 18 months there, scuba diving and giving flying lessons to the South African glitterati: in the real world, I have rediscovered photography, moved home and coped with various joys, trials and tribulations awaiting that moment when it was time once more to soar off into the wild blue yonder. Several people have tried to persuade me to get back flying (why do you think the Pope came over here?) and have even been kind enough to say how much they have missed the flying blogs so, hopefully, I won't disappoint as and when I get fully back into the swing of them. After the joys of Eastbourne's Airbourne,

I knew that the flying urge was upon me once more but there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day. I dipped a toe in the water (not the best expression, I know) by installing the software once more as I had stripped it all out when I changed to Windows 7 64bit, and spent a few days checking through the wealth of other software I needed to install as well as "obtaining" new terrain software. This new terrain software totals 43GB and is apparently taken directly from a NASA mission sent up specifically to photograph the whole of the Earth. Optimal configuration of Flight Simulator X (FSX) isn't the easiest thing in the world but I read forums, tweaked, twiddled and tinkered until I was happy.I still wasn't quite in the right frame of mind to actually restart my flying so prevaricated by considering a change of aircraft. I had flown this far in my trusty Mooney M20 Bravo but noticed that there have been further additions to the FSX catalogue. Rapidly discarding such esoteric delights as the Vulcan bomber, Apache helicopter gunship and a space shuttle, I was rather taken with a snazzy little number which goes by the name of Beechcraft F33a Bonanza - shades of Hoss Cartwright and the Ponderosa (Google it, young'uns!),

I thought that this could be the new G-BERT. It had a different instrument panel and no all-singing, all-dancing Garmin G1000 glass cockpit

but that didn't phase me as all the many hours I had spent learning how to operate the damn thing have drifted out of my ageing mind. The one problem was that, unlike the Mooney, there was no easy way to change it to G-BERT.

A small thing to some but I was quite possessive of that call-sign and so I resolved to actually repaint the fuselage by busting open the program and changing the textures folder and the config. file. I had seen loads of repaints done by people so figured it shouldn't be too difficult. I could even design a new lime-green livery as well. 3 days later I had got nowhere and was more confused than a cow on astroturf so I thought that perhaps I quite liked my old Mooney after all!

I finally sat there on the tarmac at Shoreham airport, engine ticking over and flaps set at 15 degrees ready for a quick reorientation flight. I was only using the joystick as all my yoke and throttles take up a fair bit of space but that was more than enough to get me going. Engine to full and off I went, tearing down the runway .... that old familiar feeling of exhilaration at the thought of actually flying once more. Reaching rotation speed, I gently pulled back on the stick. A little bit harder ........... harder.......... I finally realised that something was wrong as I trundled over the A27 and headed northwards through the fields. Buggrit!!

2 hours of downloading new drivers, changing registry entries and reading the many complaints from Logitech joystick users later, I realised that perhaps I needed to get my yoke after all. Now where did I put all the different bits?

That was 2 days ago and I am now all set. Yoke and throttles synchronised, Mooney loaded and I'm finally ready to go. Although the blogs finished at Durban, I need to confess I did actually get further - over to Madagascar, up through the island and then on to the Seychelles - so the first blog will effectively be a catch-up.

I'm really quite excited at the thought of carrying on. Sad as it may seem, it's all kind of realistic as I fly and struggle with navigation, radio comms, bad weather and the distinct lack of toilet facilities (OK, don't panic, I don't get THAT realistic!). Dear reader, please feel free to join me on my journey. Pack your travel pills, shorts and camera, cancel the milk and let us sally forth, up into the skies where no man has gone before (ish)!