Ne'er cast thy coat away, ‘til it be the end of May.

I remember as a kid, Mum and Dad reciting the well-worn and much reliant herders’ truism:

‘A red sky at night is a Shephards’ delight.
A red sky in the morning is a Shepherd’s warning.’

Dad in particular was very fond of the ever-inspiring:

‘There’s no time like the present.’

And:

‘Tomorrow, the day that never comes.’

Though these sayings were repeated like skipping records, I have trouble denying that ‘truer words were ever spoken’. So when I had a new saying come my way today, I thought that it was best not ‘let sleeping dogs lie’, but to rattle that cage and tell the world.

As I was sitting in my stiflingly over-heated, under-insulated office in London it began to snow. I’d been allowing ‘the devil to find work for my idle hands’ through procrastination (‘that thief of time’) while gazing dreamily out our office window. I was just resting.

To my stark surprise small white flakes had begun to descend from London’s stiflingly low, off-white clouds, and as they sauntered southward I thought to myself: “This can’t be right? It was 16 degrees (c) last week! I didn’t bring my waterproof coat today!”

Hmph. ‘Failing to plan is planning to fail’.

I’m aware that ‘that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’ but this thing was fast becoming a serious snow storm! Heavy rice-like confetti was soon plummeting toward the earth, only to be scooped, separated and chased around the sky like a hover of trout by the menacing, icy winds.

“Ne’er cast thy coat away, ‘til it be the end of May,” chanted Barbara, my well-versed English boss.

Stop! That’s a new one, I thought. But not so new to the UK as it was for me. Apparently this good advice has been circulating since the 1800s. Having said that, how come I didn’t know that? I’m sure I’d heard some variation or the likes somewhere in my travels. But perhaps I’m just an unusual case. It would have been good to know earlier.

These thoughts led me to question how ingrained these proverbial sayings were in our common cultures. I know I tend to pull a few out occasionally, but do I really use them in the right contexts? Should I be taking many of them as literally as I do? Of course, I’d never asked because it was ‘better to remain silent and be thought a fool that to speak and remove all doubt’. Or was it?

I guess it’s an interesting query given our vastly changing languages. Will the old sayings evolve with the technology and time?

Could we soon be saying:

A text at night means the weather’s alright.

Or:

Use and Apple each day, it keeps the virus’s at bay.

I s’pose we can only ‘roll with the punches’ and know that ‘if you can’t beat em, join em.’ ‘It’s no use stressing over spilt milk’ (slight adaptation there).

Just remember: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’

What the hell does that mean!?

When enough is enough?

It's one thing to ask someone to turn down their music because it’s invasively loud, but at what point does it become inappropriate for you to defend your sensibilities and speak your mind? A couple of classic situations afflicted me during the second leg of my trip to London, during which time I spent the 12 hours pondering this very question.

Situation 1: The flight was with Korean Airlines from Seoul and passengers were predominantly of Asian origin, so to begin with I was a minority voice. I was lucky enough to be seated in the same row as a middle-aged Korean man with a loud and somewhat concerning cough. This gentleman was generous enough to share his exposure and its flemmy existence with all those around him by not covering his mouth at all when coughing. And let me tell you, that thing could have deafened a small child. Between hocks and gurgles I didn’t do much to hide my uncomfortable disgust which I’m sure hit home a number of times, but should I have taken that extra step and said ‘please cover your mouth, I don’t want to see down that gaping hole in your head.’ Or perhaps ‘Dude, seriously, cover your mouth, your infecting us all.’

I was actually much more civil and simply turned my back, stuck in the earplugs and went to sleep, but was it my right to say something? What would you have done?

Situation 2: It my attempts to escape the wheezing bagpipe beside me I was forced to direct my glances straight ahead. However this caused me yet another ponderable quandary. The couple in front appeared to be engaged in some sort of avian-like courtship complete with endless pecking, preening and the ever-aesthetic beak-meeting-meal-transference. Yummy! I was sure their little ramba had to conclude with her shaking her maracas for the last time in a frustrated shimmy, but no! They had a dance for every occasion and every single solitary hour. From samba to waltz to foxtrot, these kids had a move for all occasions. I became more than frustrated when trying to watch the in-flight movie over their bobbing, bopping, giggling apparently uncontrollably, wobbly craniums and even allowed myself the pleasure of a kick or two on the backs of their seats, all to no effect.

I think the thing that also really bothered me in addition to the close proximity of our seats was their complete and oblivious disregard for the cultures they were travelling with. I wasn’t the only person made uncomfortable by their hapless foreplay; the folks in rows beside and in front of them were trading uneasy glances and the airhostesses were lost for words when offering meals and drinks.

Should I perhaps have bypassed those satisfying seat kicks and portrayed my disapproval with a cup-full of cold water, or maybe a gentle talk about the birds and bees and the distinct lack of flowers and trees to approve such actions on the plane?

Despite these exciting activities, I made it to London and back to good old Clapham without further incident. Until the next instalment!

Touchdown - Stopover Complete

Where do I start when trying to describe my trip so far? It has been exactly that; a trip. Ten rather uneventful hours after taking off from Sydney, for which I was very thankful, my Korean Air flight touched down on the freezing tarmac at Incheon International Airport, an hour outside the city Seoul.

I was told reassuringly by my travel agent that there would be a huge number of people on the layover to London and that I should just ‘follow the crowd’. I managed unintentionally to hang back and become one of the last people off the plane following a scuffle-like exit by my Asian predecessors and in doing so found a bunch of Aussie folks that were also stopping overnight. We cruised through customs, found our hotel guides without incident and were rushed onto buses for the short five minute trip to our 4 star Hyatt accommodation. Very nice!

Given my lamentably short visit to Korea, I think the most descript I can be is to say that the dusk horizon I glimpsed between bus and ritzy hotel was spectacular. The air was crisp to be sure, a bracing two degrees, and the night silent despite the close proximity of the airport. I managed to knick around the corner of my flashing white building to grab a glimpse of the surrounds.

There wasn’t much to them! No major mountains or houses, trees or buildings. In fact we weren’t surrounded by much at all, but this lonely fact gave way to a very specky skyline. The horizon was a dazzling violet that bled on one side into an infinite bluey-blackness that played home to a single star and the crescent moon. On the other side colours played between blues, purples, golds and bronzes and only the black silhouette of some very distant hills and trees gave a border to their game. It really was a topsy-turvey view with the sky so large and my thin, black terrain so small. Nevertheless, I was pleased to have managed the 30-second un-air conditioned reprieve before being discovered by the ever-attentive hotel staff. I took one last fresh breath and with a sigh of contented white mist, headed into the heated glory of swish hotel life.

I opted to share a room with a young German woman who’d been on a working holiday in Australia for the past four months. Her name was Sarah and she was on her way home to Berlin via Frankfurt to begin her university year. Together we discovered the delights of our accommodation from robes and slippers, soaps and lotions, cable and mini-bar (don’t worry, we knew the prices) to hammers and grappling hooks. Yes, hammers and grappling hooks. It seemed that in an emergency and if our floors were to be cut off by fire, we were expected to break the window of our ninth floor room, attach the hook and rope to the provided peg and belay ourselves down the side of the buiding. My only concern was who was going to use the ONE harness provided.

Dinner and breakfast were both provided in a disappointingly English menu of bacon, eggs, tomato and toast and pumpkin soup, whereas the plane allowed me to choose the interesting Korean dishes consisting of rices, mushrooms and other indescribable greens which one mixed together with a hot red pepper paste and sesame oil. It was delicious! There was also the much anticipated seaweed soup that bears a disturbing resemblance to the two-minute noodle, pour and ping variety of our supermarkets. But it was tasty and slippery, so no complaints!

All in all, not a bad experience for the stopover type, but I will look forward to a more extensive visit to the city of Seoul when I head back Australia way.