Travel Karma- Pt 2 Context

So there are to important things to explain first:

1) My terrible Travel Karma.
2) Why I was going to New Zealand in the first place.

So Travel Karma... because of my parents jobs and my jobs and just coz I'm me I have often travelled and moved round this sacred isle... however whenever I do it is often not without difficulty. I appear to be cursed with what was has become known as 'Bad Travel Karma'. Trains are always delayed, traffic jams ensue, a cab can not be found, the tube is on strike, get lost... this sounds normal you may say... but I do seem to have worse luck than most. Add to that the fact that I don't drive [having failed my driving test 4 times I gave up trying some 8 years ago]... essentially unless I walk somewhere I'm unlikely to get there easily and on time.

This seems exponentially increased if I travel abroad. For many years I simply never took a holiday. I never really saw the point; why spend money to relax [and travelling is not relaxing] when I can relax at home or do something constructive with time off work. So I would use my holiday time to make short films or produce plays .

But in the last year and a half as work became busier I started to think maybe I was wrong and I should travel.


My first attempt was New York. BA spectacularly lost my luggage. I spent a week in NY with no suitcase and caught flu on the plane over. Hmmm what fun. On returning to JFK to fly home I was told my luggage had just arrived but that won't be able to find it for days. I returned to the UK still without many necessities. It wasn't till three weeks later on Boxing Day by which time I was at my parents in Nottingham that my suitcase was returned it to me... The only up shot was a bought everything I needed and was eventually reimbursed by BA so I did get a decent shopping spree in NY all be it with flu.



My second attempt was Budapest with my brother last summer. The flight was cancelled, I wasn't through booked onto the connecting flight in Amsterdam, the hotel was over booked, we had about four different hotel rooms as they were all wrong, I got seriously ripped off in a bar, we never found a good place to drink... the only upside was the spas/baths were good.

And so to New Zealand and Hollywood...

Why New Zealand? Well when I were a lad I was in a band. We sounded something like this:




Its actually slightly more complicated as there were two bands at school and eventually we combined forced and it is this super band which is question really. After school we all went are separate ways and I never picked up drum sticks again but we stayed in touch and five of us remained great friends here are the other four when we were young:

After University Sandy [Lead Guitar] emigrated to New Zealand to live with his girlfriend Sarah... years later they announced they were getting married and I swore that it would take an act of God to stop me being there despite my travel Karma...

Hmmm...