VIVA LAS VEGAS... AND ELVIS’S HOME HAS HAD A REFURB
NEWS REVIEW
The news review that allows you to stumble across the truth, but gives you time to pick yourself up, and hurry off as if nothing had happened. Now read on: COMMUNICATION NEWS:
In honour of World Emoji Day in July, Apple has announced it’s adding cupcake and lettuce symbols. Or as we call that in Ireland, a salad. TECHNOLOGY NEWS:
A new air traffic control system will lock into place in the next few years, replacing radar and allowing planes to fly much closer to each other. This is something I’m sure we’ve all been hoping for, and indeed this column would have campaigned for had we known about it. ACCOMMODATON NEWS:
The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas is going all out with its newly renovated Sky Villas. A night there will set you back anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000 a night. But this includes an impressive list of amenities: a 17-seater bar, massage rooms, balconies with cityscape views, marble floors streaked with gold veining, and a private gym. Like me, you probably believe that a private gym can make or break a weekend. And don’t even start me on the gold veining. A week will set you back just over €200,000. Book now, or alternatively buy a house in Co. Donegal. AMERICAN NEWS:
This column hopes to visit Graceland in Memphis in the autumn. The former home of Elvis Presley has enjoyed a $45million facelift, with a newlyinstalled visitor centre complex, complete with gift shop and ‘dining experience venues’. The latter serve ‘authentic Memphis BBQ fare’ as well as Elvis’s favourite home cooking.
So long as they haven’t made the place tacky. ...and finally, the News Review grade A travel advice for the week: when you’re going on holiday always take twice as much money and half as many clothes as you think you’ll need.
A WHALE OF A TIME
AT Hermanus Bay in South Africa I bought a CD of whale music. When I got home, it turned out it was a dolphin tribute band.
OK, slight exaggeration. But the whole town of Hermanus in the Western Cape depends for its living on the Southern Right whales who make the bay their home throughout the year. So you wouldn’t blame dolphins (pods of bottlenoses frequent the harbour) to get in on the act.
Meanwhile, you can sit in a seafront café, eat breakfast, and watch the whales basking no more than thirty yards away — even if you didn’t order them.
These huge mammals, each about the weight of 40 African elephants and with hearts the size of your car, live off the rich growth of plankton found in the deep waters of the bay.
To be perfectly honest with you, these behemoths of the deep are a bit ugly, although entirely lovable. (Bit like myself, really).
Now, I only mention my journey along South Africa’s Garden Route because of Paul Theroux’s excellent travel book The Great Railway Bazaar, where he recounts some of his more embarrassing travel moments.
It got me thinking about the many cringe-worthy events that have overtaken me in a lifetime of travelling.
Some are too awful to report here – and I’m not talking about the time I was chased down the street by a woman toilet cleaner in Slovakia. Armed with her brush, she screamed at the top of her voice as she pursued me along an ancient cobbled alleyway. I assure you, I had done nothing to embarrass the journalistic profession. Nor anything untoward in the privacy of my cubicle – like exceeding the weight limit. I had merely been remiss in not having any Slovak currency for a tip.
Meanwhile, back on the Western Cape, myself and a fellow journalist had left Hermanus Bay, and were now in Oodtshoorn on the Garden Route. We needed to get ourselves, with luggage, from hotel to a nearby railway station. “Is there a cab about?” I asked Willie, the elderly receptionist. His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in calculating manner.
“Cab? To the railway station? It’s only a half-a-mile,” he said. In a jiffy he was out front, piling suitcases on his back and cameras around his neck. Off we marched to the railway station, Willie leading the way. He would absolutely brook no help from us – the full taxi fare was going to be his.
So there we were, an elderly black gentleman piled down with luggage, striding along, while we followed sheepishly behind. The ultimate nightmare for any white European liberal.
THE FAB FOUR HUNDRED
THE west coast of Ireland is where the Old World crumbles into the sea.
On the shoreline of Mayo the land shatters into thousands of tiny misty islands.
In Clew Bay, some 400 are reputedly scattered offshore – that’s one for every day of the year; plus a couple of extra for good measure.
It’s an enchanting sight – an opinion evidently once shared by John Lennon.
Because exactly 50 years ago this summer the Beatle arrived on Dorinish Island with his new girlfriend Yoko Ono.
Lennon had bought the island the previous year for £1700, and planned to live there.
As it happened, he only ever spent one night on Dorinish, although the enterprise may have had a long-term musical influence on him.
On his second visit to Mayo, the Beatle opted to stay in the comfort of the Great Southern Hotel, Mulranny, (these days the Mulranny Park Hotel) where he enjoyed a concert featuring a spot of accordion playing from the Molloy Brothers and a selection of tunes from Dominick Grady on his uilleann pipes.
Whether this kick-started Lennon’s interest in the pipes is unclear, but it seems that he was transfixed.
So entranced, in fact, that the McPeakes’ band from Belfast – who focused heavily on the uilleann pipes – were asked to perform at the Magical Mystery Tour wrap party.
Lennon described the Belfast band as his favourite group.
When they finished performing, the Beatle asked Francie McPeake for lessons on the pipes.
Lennon then ordered a set, and subsequently went to Leeson Street, just off the Falls, to collect them.
Lennon would have known that Francie’s father, also called Francie, was no mean songwriter himself, having penned the ballad The Wild Mountain Thyme.
According to Francie a session took place with Lennon joining in the chorus. Alas, it seems that John Lennon never mastered the pipes. It’s not clear why not. Maybe the break-up of the Beatles was to blame. Any hopes of a Beatles reunion were devastatingly crushed by John’s murder in 1980. Even so, Paul McCartney still harboured the occasional hope of a reunion with the two remaining Beatles in later years – but his overtures were always met with the reply from George Harrison, ‘Not while John’s still dead.’ But it’s an intriguing thought. If they had got back together in their heyday, would a uilleann piper have been co-opted into the band?
Perhaps Yoko might have learned to play them. They might even have got poor old Pete Best, their first drummer, to play bodhrán.