Mullets in the post, and more from Shetland

Alright, own up – who sent me a copy of “Fishing – The Mythical Mullet With Mike Ladle And Steve Pitts“?

It arrived in the post while I was away, with no note in the envelope and nothing on the outside other than a London postmark and handwriting I don’t recognise.  Whoever it is, though, knows my full address.

It’s not the first time I’ve been sent unsolicited mullet paraphernalia.  In the past, I’ve been the recipient of a mullet t-shirt and no less than three sets of “Mullet Power” top trumps.

More than being an irritation, it’s more fundamentally a waste as it all ends up getting chucked out anyway – and I don’t think that’s ungrateful, because there’s nothing wrong with not wanting something you never asked for in the first place.

I don’t know why people send such stuff to me.  My mission is, after all, to visit every place in the world with the word “mullet” in its name.  Not collect every form of mullet tat available.

That would be just silly now, wouldn’t it?

In other news, I uploaded another batch of photos from Shetland today – these ones from around Lerwick.

One of my favourite towns at the best of times, Lerwick was on sparkling form when we were there.  It basked in gorgeous, cloudless sunshine, Shetland flags flying from poles and buildings across town and beyond, and locals and tourists alike making the most of the fun laid on by the Flavour of Shetland festival on the Victoria Pier.

Forming part of the midsummer Johnsmas Foy, the festival brought the centre of town to life throughout the day and into the evening (I’d say night, but that far north, night barely arrives in midsummer).

The highlight of the festival for me was sampling some of the wonderful beers from the Valhalla Brewery, the northerly brewery in Britain. It’s based in Unst, Shetland’s (and Scotland’s, and Britain’s) most northerly inhabited island

More on Unst later, though, when I get round to those photos.

Two more bloody mullets

I know have two more mullets to add to the list.

An American named Jonathan emailed me a few weeks ago saying he lives on Mullet Creek, in the Indian River Lagoon in east central Florida.  In trying to track it down on Google Maps, I inadvertently discovered another Mullet Creek in Florida, this time on the site of what seems to be a massive military airbase in Okaloosa County in far north-western Florida.

That takes the number of Floridan mullets to five, and if you check my mullet map you’ll see I’ve added the two new ones here and here.  It also brings back an equillibrium – fourteen down and fourteen to go, so once more I am precisely halfway through.

Although I could have done without the new additions, and Jonathan has yet to get back to be me with more information about the Indian River Lagoon mullet, I’m glad the two I have uncovered are not too far from other ones and therefore don’t seem to present any major new logistical difficulties or trips to entirely different corners of the world.

Of course, I am no further to figuring out where, how and when the next leg of the mission might manifest itself.  There has, however, has been an interesting development recently regarding the mission, but I’ll keep that under my hat for another few weeks and will blog all about it as soon as I can.

Finally, while I’ve been able to update my map, I’ve very frustratingly failed to update the mullet page of my website.  My problems with iWeb and ClassicFTP that I blogged about some time back are continuing to dog me, and to be honest I don’t think I will stick with them for long.  I’m trying to find out about website hosting with WordPress (on which this blog resides) but am struggling to make sense of their hosting and design instruction pages.

Anyone who knows how my website would work on WordPress is more than welcome to offer some wise words of wisdom.

Enough of the mullets for now – I have an early start tomorrow as I’m working in Edinburgh, and then on Wednesday I’m off to Shetland for work, and Nicole is coming with me to make a nice long weekend of it.

I’ll take some photos, no doubt…

Mullet Magi

Grayza has pointed me towards this rather alarming post by Tall Skinny Kiwi – an examination of whether or not the Three Wise Men had mullets or not.

Deep stuff.  I’d suggest TSK needs to get out more, but I can hardly talk when it comes to mullets and study thereof.

Others have been sending mullets my way too – in recent weeks I’ve become the somewhat bemused owner of two sets of these, thanks to various friends.  I’ve been too busy and/or scared to open them.

I’ll stick with busy, actually – even though I have now come back down to earth after what seems like weeks of non-stop travels, the task of finishing off work and getting sorted for Christmas now awaits.

Joy.

Jetlag

I’m back!

I write this in Aberdeen, where I am crashing at Justin’s for the night, and am fresh out of the shower and into new clothes.  That doesn’t wash away the fact I’ve barely slept in the last thirty or so hours and four flights.

Seattle to Los Angeles to Chicago to London to Aberdeen, with what seemed like the pace of the roadtrip itself, and there’s still the last leg to go – a train some tomorrow morning back to Inverness.  The taxi driver at Aberdeen was surprised at this mammoth journey and said I was like Scotland’s Michael Palin.

A nice thought, although the idea of travelling with a crew of a dozen or so who plan everything for me in advance sounds like it would be wonderful to start with, and then exceptionally uninspiring and constricting after a couple of days.

Anyway, I have a few days before I go back to work, so can take some time to go through photos, and will let you know as I upload them to Flickr – which will mean I can blog a bit more about the trip.

Suffice to say, though, I am knackered, and not a little disheartened on the mullet front…

All packed up

Work finished, rucksack full, and camera battery getting a last minute charge.

I am just about ready to go, I think.  I may have forgotten something, but I’ve got my PMT (passport, money, tickets) and that’s all that really matters.

Even with just a few hours until tomorrow morning’s flight from Aberdeen, I am still unexcited my trip to the west coast of the USA.  Crucial facts about Mullet Island remain elusive, and I am worried we’ll never make it out there; I hear southern California is roasting hot right now; I am utterly unprepared for the experience of driving on the wrong side of the road (and with the wheel on the other side); and I’ve been told of the poor experience that is American Airlines, with whom I’ll be flying.

Meanwhile the very worst American cliches – the ignorance of Joe Public, warped fundamentalist religion, and rampant commercialism – will all be out in force as a result of the Presidential election campaign.

But I should be excited.  I know it will be fun.  I really need a holiday.  There are lots of friends I am really looking forward to seeing.  The USA really is, love it or loathe it, an incredible country.  And Justin, ever the thorough organiser, has researched all sorts of fun for us to partake of – Yosemite National Park, Alcatraz, and the humungous Six Flags (believe it or not, I’ve never been on a rollercoaster!).  And we are even going to meet a film director.  More on that soon.

Perhaps when I get on the train to Aberdeen in an hour, I’ll sigh a huge sigh of post-work relief, and Relax.

But for now… frankly I’d love a couple of weeks at home with my feet up and a good book.

Mullet update

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I’ve not done a proper update on the mullet mission for a while, and so after having done various bits and pieces on the mission, here you are.

Firstly, I’ve revised the list of mullets – removing mullets that are translations of the word “mullet” in other lanaguages.  There was one in Mexico, and several Maori placenames in New Zealand, and I realised that if I was to include these it would just stretch things to a ridiculous level (as if the mission is not ridiculous already), and there would simply be too many.  So I’ve limited myself to those which actually have the word “mullet” in their name.

That also rules out Longueuil which I have already visited.  So along with “Mulletville” I have relegated it to the status of “honorary mullet”.  That means that the grand total is now twenty-six mullets – fourteen down, twelve to go.

That’s over halfway.  Which is excellent.

All the mullets have been painstakingly located in Google Maps, and you can see my mullet mission map here, and you can have a browse around it above.

And welcome to the newest mullet – Mullet Bay, in St George, Bermuda. I discovered this when I got an email on the back of the New Zealand media storm.

And finally, the mullet mission webpage has been fully updated to incorporate all of this.

It’s now all systems go for the USA trip: just under three weeks to go…

East coast, west coast

I’m not long back from Aberdeen, where among other things I was doing some planning with Justin for September’s mullet adventure to the west coast of the USA.

We’ve pin-pointed the mullets, and have a vague route lined up, taking us from southern California almost to the Canadian border.  It will be a packed fortnight.

I must confess, however, that apart from the mullets (and seeing a few friends out there) I’m really quite ambivalent about visiting the USA, and am not too bothered about many of the sights.

Justin, on the other hand, is very enthusiastic about the trip, and is keen to track down things like Death Valley, Apple HQ, the Space Needle in Seattle, and much more.  Whether or not we will visit Las Vegas is something of a moot point between us.

He’s also set on the idea of driving through the mean streets of Los Angeles, playing “Straight Outta Compton” full-blast on the car stereo.

I’ve said I’m fine with that, just as long as it’s the Nina Gordon cover version.

Oh, here are some photos from this past weekend.

Colour

Albania is a beautiful country. I’ve been there three times and read countless books on it.

However, its beauty – best seen in the dramatic mountains and hardy people – is rugged, unkept and wild, rather than asthetic or conventional.

In great contrast to this beauty, however, was the urban architecture. From my first visit, in 1999, it was clear that towns and cities like the capital, Tirana, were in a horrendous state.

Although there were some fine buildings – including some grand Art Deco in the government quarter – the ubiquitous ugly communist tower blocks, delapidated open spaces, and a general drearyness to the city almost (but thankfully not quite) disguised Tirana’s quirky, captivating and edgy side, which I instantly came to love.

However, the past few years have seen change, and I was delighted on my subsequent trips (2001 and 2003) to see various changes for the better. One of the most obvious ones was the bold, almost garish, splashes of colour put across the brutal concrete buildings.

I was reminded of this in an article on the Al Jazeera English website about the mayor of Tirana who has been behind many of the improvements. It also brought to mind a similar article on BBC News I remember reading a few years ago.

The Al Jazeera article was brought to my attention in a recent entry on Stepping Stones, written by an Albanian-based blogger who contacted me some weeks ago about a certain place called Mullet in Albania. But that’s another story.

It made me recall my trips to Albania with fondness. I have plenty stories from that part of the world, and really must blog them one day. I have photos somewhere too, but sadly they’re all pre-digital, and I have none to hand; and no scanner anyway.

Ah well, I’ll just have to take plenty photos on my next visit, which will probably be at the end of the mullet mission, to visit that village with the amusing name…

Stunned Mullet

There’s a pub in Palmerston North, a town on New Zealand’s North Island, called the Stunned Mullet.

I heard about it while on my travels last month, although because it’s not an actual place and thus not on the list, I didn’t make time to visit it.

All I managed in my hectic schedule was to pass through Palmerston North on a bus, but had there been a bit more time it might have been nice to stop, have a drink there and take the obligatory photo.

However, one of my friends in New Zealand emailed me the other day to say that they’d recently visited the town and passed the Stunned Mullet. They attached a photo they took.

“It appeared to be quite a boring pub,” my friend wrote, “but it was a Sunday morning and apparently Palmy is a place to be on a Saturday night, so maybe it is less stunned than it looked.”

So it’s nice to know what the Stunned Mullet looks like, at least from the outside.

Besides its fish-inspired pub, there was another amusing story that people told me about Palmy.

Apparently, some years ago, John Cleese commented that Palmerston North was the sort of place you would go if you felt suicidal but didn’t quite have enough courage to go through with it.

As an act of revenge, the town named its rubbish dump after him.

TV and radio interviews

The TVNZ piece from Farewell Spit was broadcast on Wednesday night’s Close Up show, and you can also watch it on the web.  It’s quite surreal to see myself on telly, but it’s a really good piece and a nice memento of a fun day’s mullet-hunting.

And while we’re at it, I’ve also tracked down an audio file of my RadioLIVE interview with Marcus Lush earlier this month.  Sadly you can hear background noise towards the end – I was conducting the interview from a phonebox in the foyer of my hostel in Napier and of course nobody walking past would have assumed for a moment that I was doing a live national radio broadcast.  Also, as you can hear, the interview ends rather abruptly as we collide with the 8am news. 

But apart from that, it was good fun and I think I did quite well.  I also enjoyed meeting Marcus later on in the trip in Invercargill.

My inbox has now gone mad with emails from New Zealanders, which I will have to go through at some point, and my website is about to exceed its bandwidth.  I think I need to go and hide in a bunker for a while.