If you’ve ever sat down to a proper English Sunday roast, you’ll be acquainted with one of Yorkshire‘s greatest cultural gifts to the world, the Yorkshire Pudding. I’ve always loved them – delicious and visually arresting, not to mention a great place to store excess gravy (and hey, who doesn’t want excess gravy?).
But what exactly are they – and why Yorkshire?
What to do in Cyprus? Why is it anything special? Just another sunkissed Mediterranean island, you say?Read More
Breaking the ice with strangers as you travel.
We’re midway into my ten ways to break the ice with strangers when you’re travelling – and now it’s time to play the fool.
I’m leant against the car, gasping, giggling, sucker-punched by the cold. Around me, the landscape is motionless and brittle. The tops of trees have exploded as the wind tried to bend them. Overhead, dirty clouds boil past like timelapse photography. The rock-strewn ground is so hard you expect it to ring. Take the trees and ice-rimed telephone lines away, and you’re left with the surface of Mars.
I’m on the same latitude as Algeria and Morocco, and the temperature is 15 below freezing.
Modern writers have a problem, and it’s called The World. It’s noisy and distracting. They don’t know how to focus on their work. It’s a problem.
The solution is simple…destroy it.
More on that in a minute.
Breaking the ice with strangers as you travel.
The road is a lonely place.
Everyone’s a stranger. You long to connect with someone, anyone, but the odds are stacked against you. You’re in too much of a hurry to engage in social bonding rituals like feasting and hanging out. There’s the natural coolness in the air. And hey, you’re not your normal self right now – flung outside your comfort zone, living on your nerves and at the mercy of thoughts and whims born of sleep deprivation, addled body chemistry and sensory overload. Capping all that – you’re the outsider, with everything to prove.
The common reaction (if you’re like me) is to give up. To hide yourself away. Stiff upper lip, a sledgehammer air of authority you don’t feel and the kind of fixed expression you normally only see on Terminators and the acutely constipated. Lonely traveller, coming through.
But there are ways to improve your chances – and some of those vulnerabilities weighing heavy on your confidence are just the tools you need to make new friends.
Here’s how I reckon it works.
Here is a picture of the mountains in Crete.
Big, aren’t they?
But this post is nothing to do with them.
It’s all in the comments, folks.
