Category Archives: Postcards 2023

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To travel or not to travel?

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Today I met a young man who I assumed had travelled. He looked the type – a man who knew himself. He was relaxed, neither rich nor poor, and clearly happy in the company of others whoever they were.

We got talking. Our starting point was who was from where, and what what. He was a Londoner. Born in London. Schooled in London. Living in London. Working in London. Never going to leave London. It sounded as though his family had been stitched to the city for generations, and he loved it with a passion.

The conversation made me wonder – if you live in a big city full of the world, is there any need to travel? He seemed so rooted and at ease, and, as he said himself, one of the lucky ones because he fell out of school into a job he loved and hasn’t wanted to go anywhere since. So why travel? I looked at him and couldn’t think of a reason.

It was only right at the end of our chat that he told me he was about to go to the Far East for a holiday.

I was glad to hear he’d have that experience, but as I walked away into the strangely warm October day I wondered if his trip would unsettle him. I hoped it wouldn’t. Or, if it did, only in a good way.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Autumn – flaming leaves and the cries of geese

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I took this photograph with the sound of thunder rumbling over my shoulder, and bonfire smoke whisping through the trees in the distance. Minutes later the rain came, and has now drifted on.

It is this changeable time of year – October, when the trees in the last of their leaves, are so vivid, and the skies filled with the sounds of restless birds.

I think everything must be a little confused this year for it is still warm, far warmer than usual. I can’t remember when we last reached October in our t-shirts without the heating on, and no need of it. I do realise that just saying that marks us out as pathetic, for in the UK there are those who don’t turn their heating on all year. Some for financial reasons. Some to support Ukraine. Some to save the planet. I’ll let you know how far we get.

Meanwhile, autumn parades in front of us. It is beautiful – like a vanishing gift we can’t hold on to. And it happens at a time of each tree’s choosing. When the branches decide they are ready they begin to change out of their greens, until suddenly, there the whole stands, free to view, flourishing its colour as we hurry beneath, braced for the grey of winter.

It’s best to look up.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The Narrow Smile by Peter Mayne

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I’ve loved every page of this book, a review copy from Eland.

I have no special knowledge of the North-West Frontier, nor of the author, Peter Mayne, but I do enjoy travel – the kind of travel that takes you somewhere slowly. This book is full of that sort of travel, and I’ve been able to join in without setting foot outside the front door.

The journey itself is not an easy one. Peter Mayne is travelling around the North-West Frontier visiting old friends from the various tribes and embassies in the region, and exploring, or trying to explore, the question of Pashtunistan. It is a subject as elusive as the permits he needs, but even while waiting for them to be granted he drags us around with him, trailing us from heat to shade, from sweaty office to sweaty room, chatting with strangers, officials, and staff, and round and round with himself. Then suddenly he’s off, back to the mountains, and dining with soldiers.

The journey and the writing are paired perfectly. The first almost impossible, the other light as air as it lifts us from the fan-whirring heat of a place, to the languid shade of afternoon tea in the garden of a British diplomat, or on to the bouncing squash of bodies in a crowded bus. And its these bodies, these characters, and their words that catch the violence of life in their lands – the feuds, the friendships, the frustrations – the layers revealed with the narrowest of smiles.

It’s quite a journey.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023