Let me list the ways

I have inadvertently been to 13 UNESCO World Heritage sites.  I became aware of this through a clever friend ⁽¹⁾ who was too lazy to think of a proper bucket list, so she choose the UNESCO World Heritage Site List as her bucket list.  There are 911 of these in total. 

I’ve been to 10 countries and have stumbled on UWHS in 8 of them without any intention of doing so.  I won’t list them for your entertainment (or otherwise).⁽⁶⁾  A list gives you many options of fun.  Going up it or down, you can start randomly somewhere near the middle and flutter through it.  It can be sorted, memorised, trotted out at parties to start (or stifle) conversations. 

In High Fidelity Nick Hornby popularises The List.  The book was made into a movie starring John Cusack in 2000.  Of the two I have seen one and not read one.  And I saw the book.  Lists can take all different forms, but mostly it is a league table constructed by someone or some institution pronouncing definitively ⁽²⁾ on whatever. Hornby’s format is a top 5 of lots of things. 


Big five. Small five.  Little five. Baby five, famous five, Radio five, five to five, Thai five spice.  Why 5?  Probably because humans have a handy counting device for five or ten.  But ten is double as much effort to remember. 

Of the Big Five I’ve seen four and only one in the wild.  And when I saw an elephant I was not looking in a mirror.  I was looking from the back of a bakkie at some trees.  Mostly what you see in a game reserve are trees.  A grey mass appeared behind the tops of some of the oodles of trees.  It was energetically identified as a pachyderm.  Only the back was visible, but we assumed the rest of the proboscidian was attached to the back.

Another popular number for a list to contain is 7.  Seven dwarfs, seven wonders of the world, seven deadly sins.  Still trying to work my way through this one.  Stay with me; the dwarfs are fictional and there’s only one wonder left.  But all the sins are there for the taking.  Here is a list of what the Catholic Church considers to be deadly sins with my definitions next to them.  These words should also increase the number of hits this site receives.

Lust: leads to progeny and regret. ⁽³⁾
Greed: a form of selfishness centred on material wealth.
Sloth: Professional laziness.
Anger: A strong emotion; a feeling that is oriented toward some real or supposed grievance. ⁽⁴⁾
Envy:  Being upset by someone else’s success at greed.
Gluttony: Popular lifestyle choice enabled by fertilizers, money and MSG.
Pride: What gets a lot of people into trouble. 

It is unfortunately no longer a surprise to me that I botched the order of this list.  I started at gluttony, had some good food.  Quite a lot actually.  I like gluttony, can’t seem to let it go.  The evidence surrounds my waist.   Without letting go of gluttony I moved on to sloth.  In the same way you have a nap after a big Sunday lunch.  From here on progress on the list of deadly sins was slow.  I sort of nibble on lust, but truth be told, if I have to choose between gluttony and lust the choice is easy.  I have never been so horny that I didn’t want to eat.  My newest improvement on the house was moving the mirror from the bedroom ceiling to the kitchen ceiling where it will see more ⁽⁵⁾ action.

 If you are going to get through the list I recommend you start with greed and envy.  If you’re any good at it, it will finance the rest.  Lust after sloth is also fairly rare.  Has a nice ring to it though, Cedric lusts after sloth.  So get lust in early.  I do realise there is a movie called seven based on this list, but I haven’t seen it and surely my version is funnier.

Even though I am not destined to be successful with this list there are many other I am working on.  Visiting the big festivals of the world is the one I started with in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day.  The Festival of St Fermin in Pamplona, Bastille Day in Paris and the Farnborough air show are all ticked.  The big one outstanding is of course the Carnival in Rio. 

Other list ambitions I have are to taste as many different beers, whiskeys, whiskys and wine as I can.  These are not limited to 5, 7, 10 or any fixed number as the total is ever expanding I can work on these without finishing it.  Mobile goalposts providing an endless quest. What is my clever friend going to do once she has heritaged the whole world?

(1)    She’s got the papers to prove it too
(2)    Well, obviously not
(3)    These two considered by many to be the same thing.
(4)    This definition straight from WordWeb, the Thesaurus I use.  Because I couldn’t think of any funny definition.
(5)    Remove the more and the sentence is much more truthful.
(6)    I lied, I will give you the list.

Paris, Banks of the Seine   
Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville   
Works of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona
Cape Floral Region Protected Areas
Monastery of the Hieronymites and Tower of Belém in Lisbon
Cultural Landscape of Sintra   
Seventeenth-century canal ring area of Amsterdam inside the Singelgracht
Historic Centre of Prague
The Great Wall of China
Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing   
La Grand-Place, Brussels   
Historic Centre of Cordoba   
Historic City of Toledo