GraceKennedy

They say that fear is the unknown and that when you reach a mature age there are less things to perturb you. Here are some of my “bad places to have been”.

Where the name comes from:

My favourite mountain from my bike riding side is the Col de Tourmalet in France, the mountain Mecca or Holy Grail for cyclists and tourists generally. My summer home is at the foot of the mountain. The name in fact means “a bad place to be”. I have climbed it a couple of dozen times, in sun and rain, snow and mist. I have raced over it six times and the scary bit is going down at 50+mph, when it is wet. The first riders in the Tour of France climbed it in 1910 and called the organizers “assassins”. The leader on a very heavy bike with a single gear and on stony road made the ascent in less than two hours. I have done it once in this sort of time, on smooth roads with a superlight bike with 20 gears. Those heroes from another age were physically very strong. I had a near fatal accident 12 years ago on a nearby pass from where I could see the Tourmalet as I lay by the roadside and started to feel cold and prayed not to die there, in sight of the mythical summit. It seemed a bad place to be, but then the sun came out and my life continued. 

The Troubles”

I have an Irish name, but a very English accent. Years ago I drew the short straw and had to visit Northern Ireland on business regularly during what is called “The Troubles”. I was also involved with local big business and became the official spokesman for the UK insurance industry as they withdrew from terrorism, fires and bombing, since the control and compensation was the responsibility of government. I became accustomed to being searched and looking down the business end of an automatic weapon. However I flipped when on return to Liverpool, never having left the UK, I was grabbed by the anti-terrorist squad at the airport who informed me that they could detain me for 3 days without telling anyone, unless I could prove my identity. Since I had not traveled with my passport, but had written a very Irish name on the landing card, I was suspect. A bad place to be when your own countrymen point a gun at you or want to lock you up! I think my outburst in a very English accent half convinced them, but four years later I moved to Europe and never returned, a stranger in my own country.

Mustapha:

“Today”, said our taxi driver, “It is the festival of the mosque of Mustapha. All of the Berber tribes have come in from the desert”. We were in Cairo, going to see the mosque of Saladin, the great Arab leader who fought Richard the Lionheart and the Crusaders. We nodded to show that we were impressed as we turned a corner. My heart missed a beat and I felt real fear for perhaps the first time in my life. Why? Because we entered a large square full of tents, camels open fires and sheep roasting on a spit. There was nothing to connect us with the twentieth century. We had been taken by a time machine 2000 years back into history. We wanted to hide and prayed that the taxi did not break down. The moment passed, but it had been a bad place to be.

Two bad places I avoided.

First, being French-speaking I went to North Africa on business. My employers in the Mediterranean tried to send me to Libya where you paid bribes or ended up in jail until you did.  I obtained an Israeli stamp on my passport, so my visa was refused (I have never been to Israel).

Then we had a business arrangement with Angola, whose second language is also French. At the time there was a war going on and we were doing business with the bad boys. A friend in aviation insurance told us that the trans-Africa flights were frequently hit by surface to air missiles and we should travel from north or Latin America, since the flight paths were out of range of the SAMS. The cost of such a flight was more than the profit we could make so the trip was off. The good guys won and took retribution, African style, on our friends, the bad guys.

War is always bad, people get killed:

I had gone to Sicily from Malta with my family for a long weekend. We sailed past enormous aircraft carriers, my small children were fascinated by the jets flying overhead. We were sailing through a war zone.  Libya and the USA had finally started shooting at each other over the Gulf of Sirte.

We did not know this until we arrived home safe and sound.