Archive for the ‘My life & thoughts’ Category
Day five in the Balkans
May 15th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Day five was wholly in North Macedonia but involved a lot of travel on some really poor roads. We left Ohrid in the south-east of the country and travelled north-west to the middle of the nation. Here we visited the Stobi archaeological site which was a reminder of the long and rich history of this […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Day four in the Balkans
May 14th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Day four and time to move on to the third country of our tour: North Macedonia. It was 8.45 am when we left our hotel in Tirana and headed east. After a refreshment stop, we crossed the border at Qafe Thane and proceeded into North Macedonia. Now most people know Macedonia as the birthplace of […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
Day two in the Balkans
May 12th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Starting at 9 am, the second day of our holiday was different from the first. To start with, we had all had a full night’s sleep. Then, except for a brief look at the Kosovan town of Gjakova, we spent the day over in Albania. Immediately the terrain changed as we drove on rough roads […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Day one in the Balkans
May 12th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I am a man who loves his sleep, so it was a tough gig for me to rise at 3.30 am on the departure day of my holiday. This was necessary because of the need to check in by 4.25 am for my flight from Luton Airport. I spent the night at the nearby Ibis […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
BACK TO THE BALKANS: KOSOVO, ALBANIA & NORTH MACEDONIA
May 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
What was originally called on its formation in 1918 the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, then in 1929 was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and in 1946 became the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia broke up in the course of three wars in the early 1990s into no less than seven small states. […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Have you missed me?
May 4th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I’ve been blogging almost every day now for 19 years, but I’ve been silent on NightHawk for three weeks – not through choice but because of technical problems. These are now sorted, thanks to my friend Gary. I’m especially pleased because shortly I’ll be going on a holiday to the Balkans and I’d like to […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
Have you ever heard of Mardin in Turkey?
January 24th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I hadn’t until last night when I had dinner in a Turkish restaurant called “Sumak” (the name of a spice) in the Crouch End district of north London. The walls of the restaurant are adorned with four large pictures of different cities: Paris, Rome, London, and one I did not recognise. I was told that […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
That time when I almost went to work at 10 Downing Street …
January 17th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
All this talk of activity in 10 Downing Street reminds me that, following the appointment of Jim Callaghan as Labour Prime Minister in 1976, I was offered a position in his Political Office at No 10. Since it was a political post, it could not be paid by public funds and sufficient funding from trade […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Here’s some good advice: beware of my holiday destinations
January 6th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
The joke among our family and friends is that, when I choose to visit a particular part of the world for a holiday, something dramatic often happens there. The latest incidence of this recurrent pattern follows my recent posting that this year I’m hoping to visit five of the -stans of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (2)
The sad burning of the South African Parliament Building
January 3rd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I was sad to hear of the news of the fire at the South African Parliament Building in Cape Town. Somehow it seems symbolic of the flawed attempt to create a new democracy in South Africa. But more immediately it poses questions such as: how did the arsonist gain entry to the building? why did […]
Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)