2012 - Its all going horribly wrong

Well not really. Im hoping that the Chinese New Year will change things for the better. Ive had a couple of days off this week after I came down with a cold / chest infection and this after piling into a crash barrier after misjudging the exit ramp from the A14 in the dark.
Were starting to formulate some (modest) travel plans for the year, plus this year there are also the Lympics. Were taking mum to the Olympic stadium on her birthday. Coming into London from the East is actually pretty exciting though you dont see so much from the train - watching the extraordinary structures grow - The Olympic stadium, the Velodrome, the Aquatic centre and the Anish Kapoor sculpture. The surrounding area is still pretty derelict though criss-crossed by canals - the motorways of the Victorian era.
Hopefully we'll be embarking on our first expedition in a couple of weeks - probably to Portobello Road / Notting Hill using Andrew Duncan's excellent Walking London book. I picked up Derek Sumeray's Track the Plaque last year but have yet to try it Duncans book gives a round experience of the area that youre wandering round and yes there are little enclaves of like minded individuals that are congregated togethre i.e. the musical community in St John's Wood but often its the weird and wonderful juxtapositions of plaques that make fir the interest.
Besides those we’re planning a trip to Brussels and the Tintin museum plus possibly a couple more city breaks – maybe within the UK and maybe relatively close to home – Amsterdam, Paris or Western Germany. After our Mexico trip were taking it a little bit easy with a view to a big trip in 2013.
In the meantime we endure the delights of the British winter. I still don’t understand why people take summer holidays (well obviously if you have kids then you fit in with school holidays) when winter is just so pants. Still the days are getting longer (he says in a desperate attempt to convince himself) Both M and I have been a little down, suffering from the post holiday blues (not to mention various sneezes and wheezes) – the drawback of a good break is the contrast between it and the return to work.

2012 - The last year

Well it is according to the Mayans who were beeeeg astrology fans - aligning their buildings to admit sunlight on auspicious days - creating observatories (the one at Chichen itza is particularly fine) it may well be that their temples were remodelled every 52 years, the Calender round. The Mayans like a lot of civilizations used the calender to govern their activities especially agriculture. Anyhoo the Mayan calander runs out on 21st December this year.
My first choice of holiday destination was kind of out of the question - Ethiopia being in the middle of another dreaful famine that seems somehow to have dropped off the worlds radar. So we decided to venture across the pond and after a week in the user-friendly urban sprawl of Mexico City had a couple of weeks in the Yucatan Peninsula previously home to the aforementioned Mayans. Yucatan is one of the poorer states of Mexico and the inhabitants show their ancestry, broader, flatter faces, darker skins. Mayan (or rather a modern version of it is still spoken. Indeed the written plaques in the many historic sites are written in three languages - Spanish, English and Mayan. Theres a strong seperatist tradition and people are justly proud of their history and their culture. A history thats seen them oppressed and downtrodden more often than not.
We didnt get very far really. We had stays in Valladolid, Merida (the state capital) and Azamel the yellow city and enjoyed them all before returning via not so lovely Cancun and Mexico City. And yes there were plenty of cultural markers including one to Fransisco Canton - builder of what is now the Anthroplogical Museum in Merida then one of the monumental piles built on the Paseo de Montejo - the Meridan answer to the Champs Elysee by the massively rich, their wealth created by henequen which produced sisal.
Canton was governor of the state of Yucatan from 1898-1902 a time that encompassed the end of the Caste War that had been raging for 50 years after Jacinto Pat and Cecilio Chi raised a rebellion against those of Spanish descent who had political and economic control of the area. Of course it could be argued that the caste war was simply a precurser of the larger Mexican Revolution against the landed classes that was on the horizon...