Up close and personal in travel retail
Armed with my trusty Pokefi, I am seldom out of wi-fi contact. Trains, boats and planes, Ubers, it makes no difference. Heck, one day I might even get to post a story on a helicopter or in a submarine (though that would technically make me a sub-editor).
‘Mistletoe Moments’ brought me a fortune balm, together with an instruction to prep, moisturise and protect my lips before applying my festive lipstick shade. I am still pondering my preferred colour though I suspect it might be New Zealand Pinot Noir red at lunchtime.
Talking Heads and talking points. Road to Nowhere and Flights to Nowhere. I’ve been everywhere, man and it’s a long journey home. There are some great contenders for a travel retail anthem.
In the face of inevitable and glittering industry acknowledgements Martin, you will always be more famous as the guy that did the Triple Salchow off the hotel bed during lockdown.
Matilda’s name (and I’m not making this up) was taken from Australia’s beloved folk song ‘Waltzing Matilda’, a result of her penchant for stepping waltz-like from side to side.
Yesterday as I was packing to go and checking all the quarantine room drawers for my belongings, I noticed the room safe for the first time. If only I had spotted it earlier I may not have stolen my own passport.
“It’s not how, it’s how many.” With that well-worn golf phrase and a wry smile did Paraguayan pro Fabrizio Zanotti try to temper my disaffection with another ropey golf shot at the Horizon Irish Open Pro Am at Mount Juliet, County Kilkenny on Wednesday. There I was a guest of Executive Vice Chairman and CEO
Yes, the story veered just a microscopic degree away from being true. Admittedly we are talking a very large microscope. But it was April 1, after all.
“The closing four pages are so cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I’ve ever done—the harmony bites like nitric acid – the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God.”
The crack had appeared in the all-important distal phalange, one of 14 phalanges (a posh word for bone, as in ‘I’ve got a phalange to pick with you’ or ‘My favourite red wine is Côte de Phalange’).
“We’re here for the test,” said a woman in full PPE, who at first sight looked like a giant praying mantis. “So am I,” I replied lamely. “The All Blacks are ahead 16 to 8.”
The triple jump – What we used to call the hop, step and jump at school is a natural for a finely tuned quarantine athlete such as me. Hop? Why that’s so easy, I could do it on one leg.
It takes me 12 strides to walk the approximate 10-metre length of my room. That means 150 ‘laps’ or 1,800 strides to do my equivalent of the 1,500 metres. Today I plan to set a new personal best in a probably futile attempt to delay the onset of madness.
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