Ben Welsher | Writings

In no particular order other than chronologically. McSorley's Irish Bar ...36 beers stagger us but not as much as the $90 bill... Our first night on our first day in our first country of many to come found us in this Irish bar whose history dates back well over a hundred years. Presidents, poets and paupers drank here and now so had we two peripatetic Englishmen. Conversation was struck up with locals on the timeless and ever novel subject of differing nationalities and backgrounds, a scene to be repeated again and again on this trip. We staggered home happy, drunk and with empty wallets, a scene to be repeated again and again on this trip. Snorkeling in Belize ...I felt as if part of the ocean. I must confess to an apprehension of the water borne of watching a particular film as a child, I believe the medical condition is known as 'Spielbergian scarring'. I didn't realise though that Mike's watery inhibitions put mine to shame. But he did it and he loved it ...

Day 153 - Beijing Our next journey was longer than average. 14,000 miles separated its beginning and end, or rather its end and its beginning for we were leaving this new world and returning to the old. From Rio to São Paulo and a couple of days in Bogota of table-tennis (just to remind you Michael, 82-0, eighty two - nil) and quinoa education before another flight north to Los Angeles via Miami. 24 hours in the city of angels gave enough time for a stroll along Santa Monica Boulevard with its parade of entertainers, freaks and pot-peddlers. Tanned, athletic bodies pumped volleyballs back and forth on Venice Beach. Clean streets, straight lines, faintly familiar conventions. Even my fingernails, usually blackened with transit, were a pristine white through no doing of my own. Skateboarders looped and leapt along the promenade, sharks fought over morsels at the aquarium and the Hollywood sign remained elusive. After a wholesome dawdle there were two happy travellers when a pub was foun...

Day 1 - New York The cold, dark New York air hits our faces as we rise from the petroleum-scented depths of the subway. In a life of bright, hopeful beginnings and dim, crestfallen endings here is another of the former that asks for a wordy substantiation, a placement in the order of things and, perhaps like none before, a worthwhile reckoning. Or maybe I just squeeze my eyes shut and fuse the disjointed, the dismembered ends of this violent year into one seamless, happy whole. As we walk across the Brooklyn Bridge it provides as apposite a metaphor as any of the dreaming spires and brilliant lights that lie ahead. Our curious cattle shed of a hostel (can someone please investigate the previous life of the Bowery Whitehouse and let me know?) grounds us and in the finest of tourist traditions we are shortly ensconced in an Irish pub called McSorley's supping God's love (B. Franklin, 1779). Sarah, Sarah, Simon & Matt ably straddle the dividing line of a common language re...