2005-09-16 - 9:18 a.m.

I think the thing that annoys me the most these days � even more than the newspapers reporting on Kate Moss and her drug use (What�s that you say? A supermodel?! USING COCAINE?!?!? HOLD THAT FRONT PAGE!!!!) when, excuse me, but aren�t like four hundred people a day being blown up in the newly democratised Iraq or is that just freedom being dispensed in special car bomb form?

Anyway, what�s really annoying are those Hugo Boss aftershave adverts on TV. You know the ones where some gurning, concrete-jawed pretty boy does something vaguely non-conformist like not wearing cufflinks to a black tie dinner or ignoring the �dry clean only� label on his $450 t-shirt. This wanton display of inconceivable anarchy is summed up with the tag line: �Your fragrance. Your rules.� This from the company that dressed the Nazis. What are their rules? �Your Third Reich. Our flagrant opportunism.� Ah, I�m just jealous because I�m not rebellious enough to buy overpriced smelly water from a huge multinational corporation with a shady past. Maybe one day.

Off to the Maldives this afternoon. I should probably have a look where they are at some point.

�Why are you going?� people ask, and it�s a good question. Defending my job is something I struggle with a lot. I was talking with some colleagues the other night and there is a lot of disillusionment in the travel journalism business. It�s time for something new.

I�ve been reading Paul Theroux, and it�s quite inspiring. There�s a chapter �Travel writing: the point of it. � This great travel writer, who has sold millions of editions says: �I have been seriously wondering what use the travel book has�but�.it performs a unique function. A book has the capacity to express a country�s heart � as long as it stays away from vacations, holidays, sightseeing and the half-truths in official hand-outs; as long as it concentrates on the people in their landscape, and its dissonance as well as the melodies, the contradictions and the vivid trivia � the fungi on the wet boots.�

I kind of like that as a way forward.

I've started to put some of my photos up - if you'd like to have a look at the few albums there so far, you can go to:

http://photobucket.com/albums/b278/shandypockets/