Over the top

People do make mountains out of molehills, don't they (and that includes me, I can be just as bad, given one of my many hobby horses)?

A few months ago I was very worked up about bi-lingual road signs. What was the point, I asked, when only a small minority of the NI public speak Irish and the daily language usually spoken is English.

Now I'm much more sanguine on the issue. So what if road signs are single or dual language? What harm are they doing to anybody? There are more important issues to get worked up about.

Likewise I used to get very agitated about all the union jacks flown on lamp posts and outside houses. But hang on, all they're doing is marking out territory and declaring patriotism. Flags can't be violent or anti-social (though their owners might be).

So now I'm no longer bothered by them, they're just part of the scenery.

But people do get unnecessarily steamed up about all sorts of issues - traffic jams, internet glitches, bad table manners, someone sniffing, having to queue, rude shop assistants, to name but a few.

People don't just say, that's annoying. They explode with anger and impatience as if something utterly appalling has occurred. Why oh why? We all need to be more philosophical about life's minor irritations.

The guided tour

Jenny and I are just back from a 16-day guided tour of New Zealand. We wanted to visit New Zealand, as everyone kept telling us how beautiful it was, and the best way seemed to be the guided tour. We didn't fancy driving thousand of miles and we didn't want to visit only the major cities, we wanted to see as much of the country as possible.

We were a bit hesitant about signing up for a tour. Suppose we loathed all the other people on the tour? Suppose the long daily drives were hell on earth? Suppose the arrangements were chaotic, the hotels sub-standard and the coach driver a heavy drinker? We decided to take the plunge anyway and assume all our worries were groundless - which as it turned out they were.

The tour was a wonderful experience. The other people were all very interesting, the hotels were superb, the daily drives didn't seem that long at all, and everything went remarkably smoothly.

The plus points:

1) Michelle was a brilliant guide. She lives in Wellington and knows New Zealand very well. She gave us constant commentaries on the native wildlife and plants, local characters, the history of New Zealand, its volcanoes and earthquakes, its economy, Maori culture and lots more.
2) We visited all the major towns and beauty spots and saw absolutely stunning scenery in the mountainous South Island.
3) It was a great overview of New Zealand, from the big cities to sleepy villages and remote townships.
4) Hotels were all four and five star, and we had delicious food wherever we went.
5) At some places we could also pick from a range of great outings.
6) The coach seats were rotated daily, so we all had good and less good views.
7) Michelle was always helpful with any problems, like catering for vegetarians, allowing for disabled passengers, finding new camera batteries etc.
8) Everything was organised impeccably, from outings to hotel check-ins and meal times.
9) The long distances travelled went by very quickly because of Michelle's commentaries, stops for toilets and food, and stops to look at beauty spots.
10) Reece, the coach driver, always drove safely and was never reckless.

The minus points:

1) We were always on the move and didn't stay anywhere for longer than two nights. We would like to have spent more time in Christchurch.
2) The morning starts were very early - usually 7.30 or 8.00, with suitcases collected an hour earlier.
3) We were always in the company of other people, and would have liked more time on our own to explore the cities.
4) We thought some of the hotels had a lack of awareness around catering for vegetarians, which surprised us.

But the plus points so outweighed the minuses, we thought this particular company (APT Touring) did a fantastic job. If you want to see the best of an unknown country, we'd definitely recommend a guided tour.

Pic: Mount Cook, South Island

Eye of the storm

Stillness. Calm. Tranquill-ity.

So desirable yet so hard to achieve in this era of constant noise, media contro-versies, social chit-chat, cold calls, "keeping busy" and random internet blurtings.

It's so soothing and restorative to be totally still for a while, mentally vacant, stripped of all this outside communication. But the compulsion to be endlessly on the move and spilling something out has infected us all and is well nigh impossible to turn off.

Luckily Jenny and I live in a largish detached house and can shut everyone else out if we wish. We can keep the world at bay in our little private sanctuary. All those people forced to flatshare or live with relatives, but craving peace and quiet, aren't so fortunate.

There seems an unspoken assumption nowadays that we must all have opinions on everything, however trite or absurd or violent, and must voice those opinions to as many people as possible via every available outlet.

The result is a daily tsunami of raucous pontificating and ranting on every conceivable subject from fluffy kittens to surly shop assistants to anti-Jewishness. A tsunami to which I'm personally contributing of course with my own feverish outpourings. Do feel free to turn me off at any time....

Now and then I climb Slieve Donard, the tallest mountain in Northern Ireland. You'd think that there at least I could enjoy perfect peace. But no. Slieve Donard is so well-known that there are always trails of hikers trudging up and down the mountainside, cheerily saying hello and commenting on the weather.

I think to get perfect peace I'd have to clamber into a rocket and be shot into outer space. That's the only way the constant buzz of humanity could be left behind.

Mountain fever

As soon as spring is sprung, my thoughts turn to the dazzling beauty of the Mourne Mountains, and it isn't long before I find myself driving down to Newcastle and clambering up those wild slopes for the umpteenth time.

The urge came yesterday, when I spent an ecstatic four and a half hours trudging up Slieve Binnian (747 metres) in a mixture of mist and brilliant sunshine, gasping at the incredible views across the Mournes and across Ben Crom and Silent Valley lakes.

Why are people drawn back time after time to these soggy, windswept lumps of rock? For me, it's a kind of spiritual cleansing, a kind of purging of the soul from all those everyday pressures that can set my nerves jangling and my mind racing. I guess we all have our own spiritual pickmeups. For other people it's God, or Mozart, or cocaine or even Celebrity Big Brother. All I can say is, when I'm up on one of those peaks, drinking in the scenery, walking briskly, listening to the infinite silence, I feel uplifted and revitalised.

How strange that a few years ago I had never set foot in the Mournes, having spent most of my life in the unrelieved flatness, the merciless horizontality of London - and never realised what I was missing. I would stroll round the feeble hillocks of Hampstead Heath, fighting for space among the jostling throngs of nature-starved Londoners, and kid myself it was some kind of recreational high. Mountains were as far removed from my everyday life as icebergs or koala bears.

Even the slightly undulating Cotswolds were several hours' drive away through miles of gridlocked traffic on fume-ridden motorways. Whatever tonic effect they might have would be instantly extinguished by the soul-destroying grind of the journey there and back. No surprise then that I'm firmly ensconced in Northern Ireland and have no wish whatever to return to the vast concrete jungle that is London.

And I haven't even mentioned the Antrim coast road - according to some tourist surveys, even more spectacular than the Grand Canyon or Machu Picchu. Say no more.