And seven places I definitely won't be visiting

⛔Chernobyl. Can't think why.

⛔North Korea. Too close to dangerous countries like, er, North Korea.

⛔Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Apparently my invitation got "lost in the mail".

⛔Caracas, Venezuela. "The most dangerous city in  the world". 120 homicides per 100,000 residents.

⛔Norwich. All Ipswich fans will know why.

⛔Mawsynram And Cherrapunji, India.

⛔Yakusk, Siberia. -40 degrees Celsius in winter.

My seven places to visit

Thinking about the ancient world wonders and the "new seven" wonders, I got to thinking about what seven other places I would like to visit. So here they are.

Uluru, aka Ayres Rock, Northern Territory, Australia.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

Estádio Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Iguazu Falls, on the Argentina/Brazil border.

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Polar bear migration, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

Trans Siberian Railway, Moscow to Beijing via Mongolia.

Let me hear yours!

The new seven wonders of the world

The "new seven wonders of the world" were chosen by tens of millions of people voting in a contest run by a Swiss company, The New 7 Wonders Foundation, in 2007. Here they are, in no particular order.

The Great Wall of China.

Petra, in Jordan.

Chichen Itza, Mayan site in Mexico.

Cristo Redentor, "Christ The Redeemer", in Rio de Janeiro.

The Colosseum, in Rome.

The Taj Mahal, Agra, India.

Machu Picchu, Incan site in Peru.

Next, I will be cogitating on what would be on my list of my "must visit" places in the world. A kind of bucket list, In suppose. Pretty impractical in pandemic times but maybe...... What would you choose?

An apple a day...

...keeps the doctor away.

The phrase can be traced back to 1866, when Notes and Queries magazine published the first-known example of the proverb: “Eat an apple on going to bed, And you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread." According to wonderopolis.org, which is a great name for a web site. [Should that be website?] It's tag line [should that be tagline?] is "Where the Wonders Of Learning Never Cease". Darn, they got there before me.

And it's true. I eat an apple every day - or at least most days - and no doctor has been to my door in, well, years, maybe ever. [Warning to readers: don't confuse correlation with causality]

It's also true that "a brandy at night makes me want to write".

And "a post a week keeps your blog unique".

"Every second must be reckoned". Very profound.

The oldsters sure knew a thing or two. Keep eating those Granny Smiths.

Call My Agent!

This is easily the funniest TV show in a long time. Generally I'm not a Laugh Out Loud person but this show does exactly that for me.

If you need cheering up, this is the show for you. If you want to wake up in the morning happy, this is your dream. If you want to sleep well at night, watch an episode before bedtime. If you're down, watch another episode.

It's a French TV series - with subtitles obviously, the original title is Dix Pour Cent - with an ensemble cast centred around the workings of a Paris talent agency. It's on Netflix and there have been four seasons.

It's basically a French farce, with excellent dialogue and acting. Each episode stars a well known French actor - I've just watched Juliette Binoche in S2 E6.

Thank you Giles Coren of the Times for referencing this and adding joy to my life! 

You thought the Mayans died out four centuries ago?

Maya was a pre-Columbian civilisation in Mesoamerica.

The Spanish arrived in the Caribbean in the early 16th century and eventually conquered the whole region of what we now call Central and South America. Except for Brazil, where the Portuguese got there first. Until then, the major Mesoamerican cultures were the Maya, the Incas, Aztecs and Olmecs.

The name Maya was not in fact what the people called themselves. Their political culture developed as a number of city states and it wasn't until the city of Mayapan became the  predominant political and cultural capital that the name Maya came into usage, in the 13th, 14th and early 15th centuries. Mayan peoples still identified themselves by their sub cultures such as the Yucatecs, the Tztzil and the Tzeltal. I'm not sure why there are so many instances of the letter z in Mesoamerican names but they can be useful in Scrabble - if your house rules allow proper names.

Rather than bore you with a dry historical journey, which I am definitely not qualified to write, my interest was piqued by the discovery that Mayan people still live today. Can you guess how many? I'd have ignorantly thought maybe a few hundred thousand but it's actually around six million! Primarily in Mexico, they also live in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. There are apparently 31 distinct groups, speaking different, mutually unintelligible (at least according to the Canadian Museum of History) languages. I imagine that's a bit like a Cornishman trying to understand a Geordie. When I was a young teenager, a Londoner, I went with my parents to an event in Scotland and I literally could not understand a word of what the locals said.

The modern Mayan people maintain many of their historical customs. They engage in agriculture and practise various crafts.

Although of course many have adapted to and adopted modern cultures, traditional groups still follow the old ways. The Lacandón of the Chiapas rain forest, in Mexico, hunted with bow and arrow until the 1950s. One of the biggest threats to the Mayan culture is their felling of tropical rain forests to to make way for corn fields. This obviously doesn't endear them to the modern world. Or Greta Thunberg.

I would love to be able to visit Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza.

This is one of the "new seven wonders of the world", voted by tens of millions of people in a contest run by a Swiss company, The New 7 Wonders Foundation (which, frankly, isn't the catchiest name they could have used). I'm going to post separately about them. You might like to think about what you'd include in the list, before I start.

I guess modern nations have been pretty slow to recognise and respect the old civilisations and peoples in their midst. The Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Kikuyu and many others have suffered greatly at the hands of colonial conquerors and today's nation states perhaps don't understand the concepts of city states, tribal groupings and diverse languages, or the desire of their people to maintain their traditions. Homogeneity rules! I hope one day I will get to see Chichen Itza; in doing so, I will do my part in honouring an amazing culture.