Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a truly amazing show. I have just watched the penultimate episode of series 2 and feel almost as if I lived through every sword blow and show off every arrow into the hordes of Stannis Baratheon. When Tywin Lannister (brilliant portrayed by Charles Dance) strode through into the antechamber of the Iron Throne I nearly soiled myself! To wait a week for the final episode seems more than I can take right now, but needs must.


I once read an excellent book called 'Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter' which concerned the general improvement of popular entertainment. The book was designed to counter the popular misconception that popular entertainment has been getting steadily more and more 'stupid' and crude, and instead argued that very often popular entertainment is growing more complex and rewarding. This is not to say that a great deal of what passes for popular entertainment is pure shit (it truly is) but that the best of what we have to offer now truly surpasses much of what we had in the past. Game of Thrones is a fantastic piece of evidence that goes someway to proving that thesis, with a huge range of characters and an intricate storyline. The best thing about the program is that it maintains just the right level of complexity. Some say it has too many characters but this I feel is one of its strengths. It may perhaps require some repeat viewing to take it all in, but this is by no means a bad thing.

Although the show is based on a series of books by R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire), in many ways the TV show is the superior end product. This surprises me, but it should not. The only downside so far has been the premature death of one of my favourite actors, Sean Bean, although to keep Ned Stark alive just so I could see more of him on screen would destroy the story somewhat.


The show takes place in a bastardised medieval land with recnognisable historical tropes for Kingdoms. The Dothraki led by a Khal are clearly a stand in for the Mongol horde led by a Khan, the Greyjoys of the Iron Islands are some kind of Viking warrior force. Westeros itself seems to be primarily made up of dynasties from the Latin West with the lands to the east made up of Oreintalist style Middle Eastern/Islamic themed city states. This grounds the show and makes it recognisable to anyone with a sense of the past, whilst at the same time allowing for a completely new departure from established historical knowledge. Where it differs from a fictional medieval land is the inclusion of fantasy elements, particularly dragons and and ominous White Walkers from north of the wall.

The Beginning of the End

Next Monday at 10am will be my last ever University seminar. This is quite a sad occasion for me, after this there is no more taught education! I suppose I could do another taught MA, but I doubt I will. We will be spending two hours in total, firstly going over another student essay line by line on the British responsibility for the First World War (if he bothers to turn up!), before turning to the famous July crisis of 1914. It will be a strange feeling coming out of that room, in some ways the taught learning process started with my first day in primary school and in a week it all ends D: fuck me.


After that all I have to do afterwards is write my dissertation of 12,000 words (same de facto length as my BA undergrad dissertation), and I have already completed a fairly comprehensive 4,000 word research proposal to get the process underway. I know what I need to do in terms of reading so am not too worried. I have an excellent supervisor too (a true master of his field) so I couldn't really be in much of a better position. It does not have to be submitted until September, so looking for work before then will be tricky. Graduation isn't even till December! Yikes. 



Guess I need to start thinking about my future then! Although I'm going to put off wading through horribly written and confusing job applications for as long as possible, as there are few things so depressing. HR speak is like fucking martian sometimes! My supervisor really feels I should be looking to do a PhD but there are so few job opportunities in modern historical academia for military historians. This means that funding will be almost impossible to get as any research proposal I do submit will be despised, and even if I did somehow manage to fund and complete the course there would be no employment waiting for me at the end. These days its all about culture and gender! I'm sure this trend will alter in future, but I do not know when nor how long it will take so cannot afford to wait around. I still have every intention of going on with my education, I just doubt I can turn it into a career. If only I had been born 40 years earlier!

Nelson

Nelson is the biggest urban area in the north of the South Island, although by UK standards its really just a medium sized town with a population under 70,000. Its a great jumping off point for tramping in both Mount Richmond Forest Park and the Abel Tasman National Park. I spent a great deal of time camping there in a tiny campsite, taking advantage of the amazing weather. I must have spent about 20 nights there and every day was clear blue sky!



From Nelson I set off for Mount Richmond Forest Park and ended up spending my first night in a backcountry hut in NZ. It was a medium/large sized one, capable of sleeping upto 20 people although both nights I spent there alone. Richmond Forest Park is amazingly rugged and beautiful but it is also (for some reason) one of the least popular tramping trials in the country. As a result I spent a whole week there completely by myself, which did begin to grate towards the end. I remember my first night in the Rocks Hut, there was either a giant rat or a possum trying to claw its way in through the roof and I kept shining my headlight up to see if I could spot the bugger. A lot of the huts often contain a random selection of books/magazines/documents left behind by park wardens or fellow trampers. In the evenings (or during the afternoon if you arrive at a hut early) you often end up reading through all sorts of crap just left there, some of it dates from decades ago!



The whole system of NZ backcountry huts is simply amazing. A lot of them are assembled onsite by teams of dedicated wardens/builders but some of the smaller ones are built offsite and then bought in by helicopter. These huts allow for some really amazing week long walks, of the sort that just don't happen in the UK. Many of the smaller huts were originally built just as night stops for park rangers back in the 1960s and 1970s but now many of the bigger huts can accommodate up to 60 people. Virtually all huts have simple rubber mattresses and a stove, along with an axe for chopping wood. Summer is when the huts see most usage, and the more popular tramping trials require booking in advance in order to stay there, sometimes over a year in advance. This booking is not cheap, costing between $40 and $60 a night, but most of them are free during the winter so I never paid a penny. 


In Richmond Forest Park I once made the mistake of draining a tin of tuna I bought with me outside of a small hut late in the afternoon and the saltwater very quickly attracted a swarm of wasps, so I had to shut myself inside and close all the windows. As this was my first major tramping expedition I underestimated the amount of food I needed (something I consistently seemed to do) so was forced to turn back before reaching Mount Richmond itself, and exit the park the way I'd come in. Getting back to Nelson I spend a few days recuperating, and then booked some bus tickets for Motueka to the north west in preparation for the Abel Tasman.

Hacked off

I've lost something so special and I don't know what to do to get it back. I'm really very upset about it all, life all feels very aimless at the moment. Why do things have to change? I guess it was inevitable, but after a while you like to kid yourself. I'm going to try and fling myself into my work, perhaps it will help. Just wish I didn't feel so emotional all the time now. You can never appreciate a Golden Age until its over!
On top of this my time in Leeds is starting to come to an end, the specter of unemployment looms, waiting to draw me close in its cloying grip. Moving back home would be a real pain, my home town/village isn't exactly employment friendly and can be so, so dull.





I have booked myself in for an eye exam, I really hope my eyesight has not decline as badly as last time. I cannot afford new glasses at the moment either way! I've always wanted to get my eyes lasered, but as my prescription keeps changing it wouldn't be advisable. Guess some things aren't meant to be, besides everyone associates me with glasses by now. Perhaps suddenly shedding them would not be a smart move. 

Arrving at the South Island

New Zealand is divided into two main island, called simply North Island and South Island (not very original!). The North Island is the smaller of the two but is where most people live (and Auckland gets the lion's share of those) with the South having just over a million people there. You can fly to the South Island directly but as this is more expensive I flew into Auckland, and so the only way to get there now was to take a ferry via Wellington.



I took an overnight boat with BlueBridge ferries (there are only two companies) and arrived in Picton at around 5:30am. This for me, was when New Zealand really started to come alive. The North Island seems so much more flat and dull compared to the South, Picton really is very striking. I found a campsite and went to sample the local fish and chips (average at best). While at Picon I decided to walk the Queen Charlotte track, which took me about 5 days. It was here that I first suffered from sandfly bites, I was so ill informed that I simply didn't know that they bit! As a result I had horrible itchy lumps on my legs, and wasn't able to get rid of them until I got back to Picton.


It was also on the trek that I first encountered the huge number of wasps that inhabit certain areas of NZ. Apparently they didn't exist there until 1942 when they were accidentally bought over from a shipment of timber originating in Europe. Now they thrive in any area with beach trees, they can't get enough of the rich tree sap. There are so many more than in the UK, I must have personally seen over a million wasps whilst I was there and yet, amazingly, did not get stung once. Compared to wasps in the UK they are much less aggressive and tend to fly low along the ground. The NZ Department of Conservation Rangers have been experimenting with with a protein based poison called Xterminate that is excellent for obliterating wasps nests, so hopefully this can be deployed and the problem eradicated in future years.


The Queen Charlotte track (http://www.qctrack.co.nz/) was one of the most beautiful walks I went on in NZ, beautiful weather and amazing views! There were no huts on the route, so I camped overnight and met some great people. Unlike most of the routes I went on, the QCT is also open to mountain bikers which sounds like a great idea should I ever return. It's not a particularly demanding walk, but as I was just starting out I still found it hard going in places. A good way to find your tramping legs!


Once back in Picton I booked a bus at the local tourist office and set off for Nelson, the second largest urban area in the South Island, although probably not all that much larger than Kettering and Corby combined. I would eventually return to Picton on the way back to the airport about 4 months later.

Quickly Finishing the North Island

I booked a bus ticket to Rotorua which is about a third of the way down the North Island situated next to a big lake (Lake Rotorua). It is famous for its level of geothermal activity with all sorts of sulfurous gases and hot springs leaking up from the ground, which gives much of the area a somewhat eggy stench. 


Upon arriving there I had somewhat vague notions of walking round the entirety of the lake itself. I quickly decided against it as it was (and still is) fucking huge, and would have taken me a month. Instead I ended up hiking to a very small village next to another small lake and camping by the shore for a night. Unfortunately I had managed to fall asleep in a logging area and I was woken about 5am by the sound of huge trucks and diggers arriving in my area to tear the place apart, so I quickly retreated to a safe distance and set off back to Rotorua. The area isn't great for hiking and camping, so I decided to move south to Taupo which is in many ways quite similar. Its a town located on the north of the largest lake in New Zealand, Lake Taupo. 



There I was hit by another stroke of bad luck, I had arrived just before the start of an apparently famous Iron Man competition which is a bit like a marathon around the lake. This meant finding a site to pitch my tent was a bitch but eventually I managed to find a somewhere and sampled the local fish and chips. 


A comment is necessary about New Zealand fish and chips as, frankly, they are disappointing. A lot of the time the chips are more like fries (I like my chips chunky damnit!) and they do not have ANY vinegar there! Just salt, and they tend to put too much of it on the chips. They do not have cod or haddock there in large quantities (usually) and instead have a variety of other local fishes, which are just not quite up to the task. On the plus side, they are comparatively cheap (one of the few things in New Zealand that I could consider less expensive than the UK) and the portion sizes are reasonable. Still, being able to travel to the other side of the world to stand in line waiting for fish and chips is a delight of sorts, God Bless the former British Empire.


After staying a few days there I once again become bored, it wasn't really what I was after in New Zealand, although the air was lovely and fresh there. I once again got on a bus to small village right at the south of the lake whose name I have forgotten. I camped there for a few nights and ate cake whilst finishing off the second Lord of the Rings book (The Two Towers). This brings me on to a point about books and backpacking. Books weigh far too much to carry around for any period of time, except for maybe smaller paperbacks. This means that as soon as you finish a book you have to leave it behind, which for me is heartbreaking. Fun fact: floating around New Zealand somewhere is a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring I bought in a Waterstones next to Trafalgar Square. In retrospect a Kindle would have been a godsend but they were still fairly expensive back then. Books over there tend to cost a great deal more than in the UK, best sticking to second hand works if at all possible. A new book can set you back around $30 or more, sometimes $40 which is a lot of money to have to leave behind on a regular basis. That said, it was often possible to pick up new books from hostels and campsites for free as other like minded backpackers would also cast off their own literary wares upon completion.

Next I decided to head off to Wellington at the bottom of the North Island, which despite being only the second biggest city in New Zealand is the capital city. Its population is less than half that of Leeds, New Zealand has very few substantial urban areas (especially in the South Island). From there I was going to start my backpacking proper, as I prepared to take a night ferry across the Cook Sound to Picton, at the top of the South Island.

New Zealand chronicle

As they often do, my thoughts today turn consistently to New Zealand. As a means of unpacking all that I experienced, I thought I would do a series of chronological posts, starting with my arrival in Auckland on March 1st 2010.


I set off from High Bentham train station at about 9:30 in the morning and spent the day in London (Feb 27th). I changed about £800 of cash into NZ$ at what eventually turned out to be an excellent exchange rate (near enough $2.2 to the £), before going to a cheapo Travelodge for the night booked right next to Heathrow. Rather embarrassingly I managed to get lost on the way there, having only some poor, briefly scrawled directions on a scrap of paper to guide me in the dark. I had to resort to ringing my dad and he guided me there sitting at the computer using Google Earth. Not a particularly auspicious start to the journey! My feet were killing me, having spent hours walking about in the dark so I went to bed early and woke up about 4am and set off for the airport. I believe my flight was around 9 but can't really remember. Check in went smoothly, and I treated myself to an overpriced Full English before I boarded.



The flight itself was 24 hours long, with 3 stops; one in Dubai, one in Brunei and finally one in Australia somewhere, I can't remember where. Technically due to the +12 hour time difference it was a 36 hour flight. Its certainly one of the longest flights you can take in the world, and it really was so dull. I watched all the usual in flight movies and TV series on the build in screens but they only entertain for so long. It was dark when we stopped in Dubai so I don't remember it, Brunei was SO humid, even walking to the terminal and back bought me out in a sweat. All the windows were dripping with water! 



Eventually we touched down at Auckland International Airport, built a couple of miles out from the city proper. It was about 3am when we landed, and the first thing I remember was the freshness of the air, it was like a fresh sea breeze magnified many times. It took many days to get used to it, for whatever reason (presumably far fewer people) the air is much cleaner over there. I managed to find a minibus service delivering people to central Auckland for $30. It was still dark, and I couldn't book into my hostel until 10am so I wondered around central Auckland for a while eventually tiring and finding a seat in a near empty plaza. 


It was then that it hit me: I was on the other side of the world! I didn't know anyone here. It was very exciting! I had arrived with no plans at all (other than 2 nights booked in a hostel) and no real experience of foreign travel. If I could go back in time to any moment it would be this one with everything stretching out before me. Finally 10am arrived and I chucked my extremely heavy rucksack in my 16 person dorm room before striding out into the city to attempt to plan something resembling a holiday.