The Micro Traveller

I am still travelling.  Well, a little bit.  Mostly by train to London, although I have been as far afield as Sheffield of late.  Last month I spent a suitably romantic week in a secluded retreat on a Tuscan hillside.  It was my honeymoon, so I thought I had better NOT blog about it.  Felt a little inappropriate. 

So a short entry this time – to let you know that I have NOT forgotten about this blog.  Travel blogging was my first 18 months ago.   Since then I moved on to blogging about “stuff”, about public-diplomacy, about peace on the World Bank blog and recently about media and conflict on the 4imediate blog.  Perhaps it’s too much – you may well see a lessening of me on the airwaves as I settle into married life and lead a less virtual life.

Really this entry is all about showing off the new Nomadic wheels.  A beatiful beast perfect for a British mini/media lover.  This 23 year old Mini City has been wrapped in news stories on the history of the mini.  A funky way to travel, especially given the mini is 50 this year!

Le Blog de Nomade

Once more I feel my claim to the title “Nomadic” slipping away. These days I talk to the rest of the world from my cosy rural Hertfordshire retreat via skype, social networks and write ranty blog postings about Islamic identity and strategic communication. So as a refreshing change I am going to pen some thoughts more about baguettes and romantic renovation than advice on saving the world. So, at last a travel post about a country I have been to several times over the past year and an attempt to prove my nomadicity.

I was 11 years old when I left the shores of the Great British Isles for the first time. Le Harve didn’t know what hit it when I landed together with about 80 of my school friends back in 1982. We behaved badly on the ferry crossing: we snogged on the top deck; we smoked discarded butts and drunk the dregs from glasses in a shadowy bar at one o’clock in the morning. When we arrived in France we promptly fell asleep. The only thing I can remember from the 24 hours in France was sitting in a cafe wearing a navy blue beret and stripped shirt (although I think I only have this memory because a teacher travelling with us snapped a photo of the moment and to my embarrassment it went on the school notice board). On the way back the boys got caught with the flick knives they had purchased and were suspended from school, which cast an ugly shadow over the whole affair.

I have returned to France many times over the years – weekends to Paris, grimacing moments at Disney, but usually just passing through with my eyes closed, evoking a gallic shrug of indifference. To say I haven’t made the most of the place is a huge understatement – but to me it just never quite felt foreign enough. It seemed like going out for a wild night on the town and ending up at your next-door-neighbours house for a beer. As a young traveller I was more concerned with ticking off countries in the middle east, southern Africa and the tropics.

However, last year I fell in love with a dashing English man who lived in Brittany. This time France was plucked from my periphery vision and thrown in my face with unexpected delight. Unlike girlfriends before me, integrity prevents me from going into detail about my relationship with the gentleman concerned, however I will say he is quite the best thing to have ever happened to me. And as Nomadic enters a new era – finally spending my time in free flow writing and painting and doing what I am good at for a living (and what is right) – maybe the time has come to take a good long look at France (maybe even learn French). Sometimes for less than a quid Ryanair will transport you to Dinard (with a cheesy fanfare arrival if you are lucky enough to be on time) – which I wouldn’t scoff at for love nor money (or indeed both). So a few snapshots if I may of the France that the man in my life has shown me – a small piece of a country I have blinked and missed far too many times before:

Flying kites with five wonderful children (his and mine) on a cloudy beach at Saint Lunaire on the Emerald Coast; a famous five bike ride to a twee French geranium filled village; the best fresh fruit and vegetable market I have ever seen ever (Rennes); a moving moment at the cheese stall (at the said market); eating cherries (that market again – I said it was good); running breathlessly across a cricket pitch in the dead of night (yes, cricket in France); feeling fluey and glimpsing the amazing beachscapes of the Brittany coast; looking up from the cobbled streets of old town St Marlo and dreaming of apartment living; smiley, friendly French people (which is against everything I was bought up to believe); Wolf the kitten purring like a tractor; delicious pastries caked in wasps; amazing serendipitous floor laying and a cool beer to celebrate our feat; dead men and plasterboard; photographing fields on a misty morning with my new iPhone; and those chimneys three in a row across the rooftops of Rennes, which I still see every morning as I wake up.

So some of my moments in a rough sketch– and there will be plenty more to come I am sure. Perhaps now that I have a (second) permanent home in Brittany I will write more about life there and report on the renovation project, if only to prove I am still on the move (albeit a little slower) but can live up to the name “Le Nomade”.

Nomadic Time Traveller

Ever since I discovered that there were people in the world that actually subscribed to this site, I have felt obliged to update this more often.  Point is, recently my nomadic branding has been a bit of a sham.

I have just eaten my supper, jacket potato with cheese from a tray on my lap.  It’s icy outside and even inside I have on a thick jumper and slippers.  The gentle hum of the dryer tells me my upstairs windows are steaming up and the cat is tightly curled next to me and gently purring.  The television is on to keep me company (the one where the nomad stops moving), and I generally feel like a comfortable, settled person, for whom wandering outside to deposit my empty cans and bottles into the recycling box is a venture.  Nothing like a nomad at all.  In fact, aside from lurking around Westminster and exploring the full length of the M6 motorway, I haven’t been far lately (nothing since the stan).

However, I have time travelled (I don’t mean turning the clocks back an hour last weekend causing the usual confusion).  And I thought I would muse on that for a moment.  Mainly compliments of Facebook, I have been contacted by a flurry of old school friends.  It’s viral, and fuelled by idol curiosity, but as someone who rarely looks back and isn’t the least bit nostalgic (I know, it is an issue) I have been phenomenally reflective about it all.  You see, when I left Bristol over 20 years ago, I sort of thought that everyone stayed where they were.  If ever I go back there I still look at teenagers thinking I might know them.  Now I discover that my former school pals are lawyers, doctors, actors, photographers, even porn stars (you know who you are), and I also discover that they don’t all live in Bristol. 

So, it’s all good.  Us Fairfieldians are an attractive, cosmopolitan bunch.  Up until the point that one of them becomes a grandparent.  Then it just feels odd, because IN MY MIND I am still a 14 year old hanging out in Mad Harry’s amusement arcade in Broadmead, and smoking up the lane with Theresa and Lesley.  I am still passing my Dutchi on the Left Hand Side and I am still scared of Miss Ace.  So GRANDPARENT?  Nooooooo.   I think it’s time I went somewhere again before I start thinking about this too hard.  I am off to a Mediterranean island next month, and I think I have taken this inertia far enough.

Path to Peace

This story was originally published in Kindred Spirit Magazine in the UK in 2007.  This is the unedited, original version.  A very personal story of my unusual own path to self discovery in Iraq two years ago.  I am posting this on International Day of Peace and Global Ceasefire  as part of the Blog 4 Peace campaign sponsored by the UN to illustrate that peace can be found in the most unexpected places. 

 

I knew before I fully embarked that I was going on a terrific journey.  I packed my art material’s, a guide to Chi Gung practice, some ambient sounds, and had the intention to perfect the ten minute Tai Chi form I had learned.  Anyone would have thought I was bound for retreat or a relaxing holiday – but I was about to enter a strange and violent world.  As I armed myself with what I termed “my spiritual support” the words of Thomas Hardy came to mind – “If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.”

I had volunteered to be part of British reconstruction effort in Southern Iraq and was set for a six month journey of discovery.  Away from family life for the first time in thirteen years there was an unexpected freedom to be found at the British base in Basra.  I was no longer required to clean, cook or wash clothes.  With the mundanities gone all that there appeared to do was work and reflect.  Another change for me was saying goodbye to my house in rural Cambridgeshire, and home became a small reinforced concrete “pod” containing only enough material possessions I could carry in my kit bag onto a military helicopter.  I considered this a real freedom and already understood that I needed to shed in order to gain.

My new colleagues came from walks of life I had rarely encountered – soldiers, military, police, prison wardens and a 98% male environment.  Previously I have sought diverse friends, but this was testing all my boundaries and although I asserted myself quite forcefully at times, I found I rarely had to alter my calm approach and my gentleness was often welcome and refreshing for some of my new adrenaline filled friends.

And as the physical situation became more and more dangerous, I began to see rays of sunshine, shafts of hope and the tenderness and compassion within those around me began to leap out.  There was no doubt I was among truly remarkable people.  I remember a young soldier came to my office.  He was hot and tired after a long day on patrol, but his eyes were bright and good.  He was part of the current military operation, where British and Iraqi troops went into deprived areas and “cleaned them up”.  He had spent the afternoon repainting a school but had misgivings about whether he was “making a difference”.  He had met a young girl with a hole in her heart who needed an operation but could not afford it – he wanted to help and had heard that I was someone worth exploring this with.  The compassion he showed was a treasure, and I was to learn that there were other British civilian and military staff who regularly funded the studies and healthcare of some of the Iraqi people they had met on their own journey. 

I was beginning to see that within every bad experience or situation, it is often laced with equal amounts of good. Considering Iraqi poet Mahmoud Darwish’s claim that Iraq was a “desert for those who look for God in the human being” (from his poem “A horse for the stranger”), I soaked in the glimpses of light which others seemed too often miss in this environment and began to point them out to others:  The calm and jovial army Chaplain - “the Padre” who strode around the base with a biblical wooden staff and a cheery word for everyone he met; the heroic CNN journalist who lived in a dangerous part of Baghdad and had seen grotesque experiences in his personal quest for the truth; the Basrawi journalist who struggled through our tight security in order to bring me deliciously sweet dates from his own garden; and the kindness one prison warden showed in caring for a stray cat he had adopted.  But none illustrates this more profoundly than the selflessness of our personal security team who would and have laid their own lives down to protect us. These riches began to fill me up as I understood the beauty and resilience of human nature and I recognised in myself, as my inner calm grew stronger with every rocket and mortar attack, what it meant to flourish in adversity.

And it was not simply to witness these little gems, it was seeing the whole.  The good and the bad, to understand and empathise with a soldier or an Iraqi policeman in entirety is as valid and uplifting as understanding a wise sage or enlightened soul.  Self discovery and development can happen when surrounding yourself with like minded people in peaceful flowing environments, but equally moments of real clarity can be found in real contrast, in difficult moments, and when facing death.  It helped me to explore and recognise the extremes and possibilities within the human design.

In approaching my own spiritually I drew strength from my reflections and each morning I would wake and, after waiting for our security teams to clear the grounds of any unexploded munitions, I would creep to the banks of a nearby lake and feel the strength of the sand under my feet, coloured pink by the rising sun.  Alongside the small bee-eaters and kingfishers diving for insects and fish, I began to perfect my Tai Chi, and loose my self consciousness to such an extent that others around me too wanted to learn.  And so I learned not only what it is to have inner peace, but the added pleasure of inspiring calm in others. 

I saw the poetry in my Iraqi friends.  Each journalist I met introduced themselves on tatty business cards embellished with delicate flowers as an “artist”, a “writer” or a “poet”.  I understood how poetry is central in Iraqi people’s sentiment and temperament. That despite unspeakable hardships, creativity and life continued to flow through them, as did Basra’s awesome Shatt Al –Arab waterway, in an unstoppable gush.  Though peppered with barbered wire the river retained it’s sparkle and allure and overwhelmed me each day.  Iraqi poet Badr Shair al-Sayyab writes in Death and the River,  “are you a river or a forest of tears?”  The answer for me was both, and more.

As I reached the end of my first tour I recorded my feelings in a diary. Sitting in an air-conditioned freight container with my art materials, my guide to Chi Gung practice, and ambient CDs stuffed into my kit bag at my side, I felt not just an overwhelming sense of being alive, but I realised a long sought after dream of “being here now”.  Perhaps this is only possible after facing and witnessing death.  Again I thought of Hardy and wondered if I had taken a good look at the worst.  I reflected on how in my culture death is hidden, kept away and rarely spoken of and how unhealthy this was for the spiritual development.  I wrote, “in this freight container lidded with corrugated metal, situated in the dirty grounds of Britain’s biggest military base in Iraq, I feel as free as a bird”.

Kabul – Just Photos this time

In response to your comments and messages (particularly from the blogcatalog fraternity) I have pasted some more photos below.

The view from my bedroom window

Nomadic on Passport Lane, Shar-e-Naw

Kabul Street Scene

Kadeer and I

 

Kabul from Kam Air Flight 006

herat glass shop kabul

Nomadic and the distinguished Mr Mobarez

Buying a mobile phone in Kabul

Back from Kabul – part 1

street in central kabul

 

So I am back safe and sound from the Stan.  I did try and write in the few moments I could grab between filthy Marlborough Lights and restless sweaty sleep (interrupted by the throb of an ancient air conditioner and momentary power losses), but I was too busy living it, to be writing about it.  At last I am lancing the cyst and allowing some of my Nomadic tales to tumble forth.

 

Last time I traveled to Kabul it was on the UNHAS flight, and all previous trips to so called war zones have been diplomatic (ha!) so I was slightly perturbed by the prospect of a lone civilian arrival.  The airport smelt like the inside of a new car, and the Japanese funded concourse with a handful of shops and smiling shopkeepers children not an unpleasant place to await my gracious host, Dr A to arrive from his flight from Peshwar.   

   

  

 

boy at kabul airport

 

Dr A was gracious indeed and made sure I was fed traditional Bolani  washed down with lemon tea within minutes of our arrival at his office which doubled up as his house.  Bolani was stuffed with leeks, dripping in fat and meant to be doused in sour yoghurt.  I apologized in advance, feigning a weight problem (you saying I’m fat?), but then surprised myself and gobbled down the whole plateful, to the joy of one of the cooks – a small lady dressed entirely in black, who later cared for me like a mother, bringing green tea, filtered water, rubbing my aching shoulders and even closing the blind, less my delicate European eyes should wince at the mountain sharp sunlight.  So to receive messages citing my bravery are frankly an embarrassment – there is nothing brave about being treated like a queen – unless you are Hilary Clinton.

 

Despite the quips about ancient air conditioning, the lodge was a wonderful place.  I had an enormous wooden paneled room, with a large writing desk (that called me to it in weaker moments and teased me with an intermittent internet connection) – and it even an en suite.  The shower was never warm, nor was it a shower (simply as waist high tap), but hey, the toilet flushed and the window opened to let in fresh air.  AND there was a light and a mirror, so I could fix my head covering arrangement appropriately.  Here is a tip for female visitors to Afghanistan – people WON’T get to see your hair, so DON’T bother washing it.  Washing it makes it slippery and silky, and for the amateur head scarf wearer, this is a constant anxiety.  Filthy, greasy hair provides far better friction (there is a sentence I never thought I would write).  And forget using volumising shampoo (what was I thinking?)

nomadic in the bathroom mirror

The Lodge catered to my vegetarian tastes pretty well too.  The first evening we were treated to a vegetable stew and potatoes, where every single bean and vegetable was cooked to utter melt in the mouth perfection.  And the green tea flowed and flowed, as it did throughout the week.  Enjoyed mainly on the seating outside next to the rose and geranium borders washed down with nicotine and the Afghanistan Times.

green tea and newspaper

Travel around Kabul was in a dusty four by four and our preferred driver found his way to our meeting points by getting lost, questioning policeman and having long and multiple phone conversations.  I was here to research the media in Afghanistan and talk to journalists – they were not always easy to find it seems.  As this is my travel blog I think I will stop there.  I am sure in days to come I will blog some Nomadic Wisdom  and some public diplomacy not to mention a fair bit of World Bank on more serious notes, but this is a more personal take on Nomadic’s travels, not her work.

I want you to know that the majority of people in Kabul don’t where Lungee turbans nor pakol hats, and many of the women don’t wear Burkhas.  I want you to know that Kabul has streets lined with shops, some very modern looking, akin to malls even.  People have mobile phone, have a choice of 30 newspapers and hundreds of radio stations to listen to and TV to watch.  They can fill up their modern cars at the smart new petrol station and drive past a beautiful park in the centre of town (al be it down a pot holed road).  To say the people I have met are resourceful would be an understatement.  They are able to learn a whole new language (usually of an occupier) in the blink of an eye, and carry out business in the most extreme conditions. 

As I mentioned, a few weeks ago (if that) a bomb tore through the Shar-e-Now district, where I was staying.  It killed 41 people, mainly Afghans who were queuing up to apply for visas to India.  The stores along Passport Lane (which surprise surprise houses the Passport Office) were blown apart – ceilings collapsed, glass windows shattered, equipment destroyed.  Young students were also blown apart, bits of them landing on the lawns of the lodge I was staying in.  But just weeks, if not days later, all that remained was a small pile of twisted metal and rubble littering one side of the street.  Shop fronts restored, generators bought in, businesses making do and bringing in an income.  And smiles on faces, perhaps a little jaded, but there for this curious foreigner.  I was impressed.  Without getting too political (I did say I wouldn’t do that) – the only mystery to me is how a country which is under going multi million pound regeneration and a reconstruction project list as long as your arm has an unemployment problem.  That, my friends, is an outrage!.

Far too long for a blog….I’ll tell you about houses dotting the side of the mountains, goats, Herati glass and carpets next time.

passport lane bomb debris Kabul

 

Live from Kabul part 2

Thanks to everyone for sending me supportive messages – as I said, reports of my bravery are wildly exagerated, for the most I have been sipping green tea opposite smiling friendly Afghans, enjoying the sunshine, and hearing amazing stories from amazing people. I am here, as you might guess to talk about and to Afghan media – a wonderful opportunity and exploration…which I shall write more about.

I have very poor internet and phone access right now – so I am amazed I am even able to post this. I am sitting at the reception desk of the lodge house I am staying typing away – my green tea awaits outside. Once the self imposed 10 o’clock crufew is over I will go about town again. Once 10 o’clock is passed, the suicide bombers have either detonated or given up. Having lived in Colombo, I think it is mighty generous of the said matyrs to stick to a time slot. I am not being alarmist – I am staying metres away from the Indian Embassy and evidence of the tangled wreckage and blown out windows remains.

Pictures will follow, but the technology isn’t with me at the moment I am afraid! More soon……..

Live From Kabul

I’m thrashing this entry out very much on the back of a fag packet.  I have a ten minute gap in my day and wanted to rest the old Nomadic kit bag for a moment and pause for breath.  I’ll shower in a moment.

 

I have arrived in Kabul.  The sun is shining brightly and the city actually looks as if it is sparkling, traffic is moving, bicycles, blue burkha clad women shopping with their children at stalls bursting with fresh fruit, vegetables, cooking pots, rows of car exhausts (? A bizarre impulse buy), alongside the streets we drove down. The mountains loom over the city providing a backdrop of small houses like brown cardboard boxes dotted up the slopes.  Well more on that soon enough.  The cynicism will kick in, in about…..oh….ten minutes, so enjoy the romantic description whilst it lasts.

 

My journey here was uneventful.  The Kam Air flight didn’t crash into a mountain as feared (although it is odd flying through valleys with peaks either side of you).  In fact the most distressing thing was not getting to watch the end of North by North West which was interrupted by the captain of the Emirates flight to Dubai saying we should prepare to land.

 

More later, of course, but loved ones rest assured – the Taliban may blow up mobile phone masts, but the power of the internet is a force to be reckoned with (at least in those VERY well protected parts of town, and where people can afford a connection).  Nuff said.  I will be in touch.

 

PS – Apparently there was a suicide bomber strolling around town this morning, suffice to say he didn’t detonate anywhere near Nomadic……

 

 

Mental Travel

  No, not mental as in mad.  Mental as in imaginary.  I have no means of transport – so it’s all in my mind.  If I could mentally transport myself ANYWHERE in the world right now it would be to a certain campsite in Brittany, France.  But this nomad doesn’t travel far of late.  Not since she spun out of control on a wet road somewhere near Brize Norton in Oxfordshire last Sunday.  Out of control and into a four foot deep ditch which someone had carelessly left alongside the road.  I am told it is pretty hard to write off a Landrover (right off?), but discovery by name, discovery by nature – we found out it was possible. 

 

Amazingly me and the kids clambered out with barely a scratch (although I had mysterious bruises on my knees that I put down to dubious alien intervention).  My son said it was “like Jackass” and my daughter immediately texted her friends, glad to have some dramatic news.  My youngest was more concerned about spilt chocolates.  I have to say the site of the underbelly of my beloved vehicle illuminated by the flashing police lights in the pouring rain was a sobering moment.  They closed the road as the recovery truck winched her out, and she slithered out of the undergrowth like a newborn.  I slapped her arse and knew I wouldn’t be driving her again, poor love. 

 

So this week I have toyed with the idea of having no car.  I went through a similar feeling when I said goodbye to the au pair last year.  How could I possibly cope alone with three kids?  It would save money of course, but logistically?  Was I mad?  It seems like such a big change, but as Alan Cohen writes:

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Wise words indeed (perhaps better on my nomadic-wisdom site although that has been taken over by Iraqi football).  “In movement there is life, and in change there is power” – 4 Nomadic with her perpetual moving on and perpetual arriving at something new the words give strength.  But I realise that although dubbed nomadic because of the number of times I have moved house and for the many places I have been to around the world, it is really all about a state of mind.  I can continue to embrace change and life can be an exciting adventure, without actually going anywhere at all.  The movement is all internal and the trick is not to stagnate. 

 

That said, I have spotted a wonderful 1973 soft top Series III Landrover that would suit me down to the ground.  I could be in Brittany before tea time.

 

From New York to Glastonbury Festival

Yeah yeah yeah I went to New York.  My life has moved on quicker than my ability to blog about it.  I am not heartbroken, although I DO prefer to blog in real time and not with hindsight (it is of no benefit I find).  New York was…well, I am sure there are a million blogs about New York.  Wait, I’ll check out a few recommendations for you link link link.  I worked very hard at the UN (see some slightly more official blogging on the world bank site) and I bigged up the clients – actually, minor corruption issues aside, the UN IS pretty cool, and despite my previous rant on the likes of Clooney – I thoroughly approve of his Blue Hats endorsement.

 

So skimming briefly over New York here – it was mostly work; one groovy drunken night out in East Village with some media types who were impressed with the capacity of my pal from Kosovo to consume St.Vincents (girly gin based cocktails); a bout of shopping in a huge electronics store run my thousands of orthodox Jews; and a brief excursion to the apple store (where I narrowly avoided an encounter with Riana –a-a-a-a) suffice to say I DIDN’T make the most of it.  Nor did I meet up with fellow bloggers as I hoped…I am beginning to wonder whether other Blogcatalog bloggers exist in real life, or whether BC run a cunning software programme which invents helpful friends for me and is ultimately designed to make me fork out money on domain names (it’s working so far).  Sorry that’s a little unfair to Benny – I am sure he is no figment.

 

So that was New York and this is Glastonbury.  Rock and roll.  3 days in the mud and sunshine drinking cider and feeling young at heart.  Well…erm….sort of.  My mum does kind of live in the village so I have to confess my nights were not spent under filthy canvas, but under fine linen sheets.  And, I caught myself in work mode on more than one occasion making comparisons with El Fasher IDP camp in Darfur.  The close proximity, the stench, the rubbish.   They even have an annual arts and music festival there (I bet you didn’t know that).  Clearly there are some obvious differences.  Like war, rape, abuse, tribalism, abject poverty (as opposed to gross indulgence) and of course the residents aren’t able to stuff their cheap Tescos sleeping bags into the back of their Renault Clios and zoom home to the luxury of a hot bath.   But one thing DID cross my mind.  Why doesn’t Michael Eavis and his posse get involved in humanitarian relief?  I know they raise millions for charity (Greenpeace, Oxfam, WaterAid this year- but with the exceptional ability to facilitate 180,000 people (not official figures, just a guess based on a rough head count after a few bevies),  collect 800,000 million gallons of human waste from 2,500 toilets (ish), and operate a pretty efficient refuse collection service – I’d think the Eavis family would be pretty well placed to have the know how to offer emergency relief after eathquakes or other such natural disasters (or even man made ones).   The healing field would be a great asset too.

    

Yes.  I must have been really fun to be with.  No wonder my teenage daughter decided to disappear with a couple of friends during the Hosiers just to annoy me.  (in 900 acres forget needles in haystacks, think more needles in New York City).

 

This is the world’s biggest open air arts and music festival, ladies and gentlemen.  But to say I got away from work and relaxed completely was probably a bit of a stretch.  The Glastonbury experience with three kids and your mum isn’t traditionally rock and roll – but I tell you I had as much fun watching a man climb into a green balloon in the circus tent and seeing my son learn to unicycle as I did rocking to the Wombats (and the dulcet tones of Elbow, of course).  And no, I didn’t see Jay Z, Biffy Clyro was a more attractive prospect at the time.  The point is I was back in the land of my birth (ok…perhaps another slight warp of the truth – I was born and raised in inner city Bristol not the mysterious Vale of Avalon – but the cider is the same, my lover). And I haven’t failed to notice that the inaugural festival was held around the time of my birth.  OK, now you know too much.