Us audiobook

”’I was looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together.''Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that?’”This was the conversation moments after Douglas Petersen’s wife rolls over in bed and informs him that she believes their marriage is finished. Their son Albie is a few weeks away from leaving for college and she “wants to feel this is the beginning of something new, not the beginning of the end.” For some people a conversation like this would not come as a surprise, there had been flashing red lights for years. For Douglas, who has enjoyed almost three decades of involvement with this woman, it comes out of the dark like a mugger’s leather clad fist impacting the side of his jaw. Douglas is a man as stable and predictable as the sun and the moon. He is a biochemist studying among other things the genital architecture of the fruit fly. Maybe not exciting stuff to others, but being able to study evolutionary mutations in a few generations instead of waiting a millennium can be fascinating work. His wife Connie has an artist’s soul. She is creative and used to sketch pictures of people before motherhood became all consuming. Albie shares her same passion for art, music, and photography. Douglas doesn’t always understand their passions, but he does appreciate the intensity they have for their interests. It is the same way he feels about science. He loved Connie’s sketches and when they buy their first house he offers to build her an artist’s studio. David Nicholls moves us between the past and the present as Douglas relives their life together. One of the painful things to watch as this plot unfolds, is Douglas trying to support his wife’s and son’s interests only to somehow always say or do the wrong thing. Part of this is he is not “right minded”. They know this, so any attempt he makes to appreciate art the same way they do somehow diminishes their own enjoyment. If he likes a piece of art then it must not be any good. Connie springs this urge to” discover herself” on him just before they are to begin a family grand tour of Europe. Maybe not the best timing. He chooses to believe that she is only thinking about leaving him, that the jury is still out. The European vacation is one more chance for him to prove himself, to win the hand he most wants to hold for the rest of his life, one more time. Albie is the typical moody teenager who has become an expert at dividing and conquering his parents. Connie, always the protective hen about his artistic interests, is also the reliable counter weight to Douglas’s attempts to pin Albie down on exactly what his plans are to become successful. There are two competing schools of thought on what success really means. To Connie it is pursuing your interests to the detriment of financial security. To Douglas it is to pursue a way to make a living and with spare time chase those artistic dreams. Neither system generally leads to happiness. The best chance anyone has of achieving any level of contentment is to find that tricky balance between financial stability and still manage to find ways to express themselves through a creative endeavor. For instance, a circulation manager in the Midwest might decide to write book reviews so he doesn’t go fruit loops for cocoa puffs. I know it isn’t as sexy as writing poetry, but it is a form of expression. So after hoisting this Sword of Damocles over Douglas’s head Connie assures him that they must keep up appearances on this trip for Albie’s sake. @*%#!Marriage has always been difficult, and with each new study the divorce rate is climbing all over the world. The divorce rate in the United States is estimated to be at 53%. Fortunately for Douglas he has better odds in Great Britain at 42%. Money is still the #1 reason for divorce, but I think the truth of the matter is that wrapped around any of the top reasons for divorce is the spectre of boredom. There is the seven year itch. Then the next big detriment to marriage is when the kids are finally scooted off to college, exactly the circumstances that Douglas is facing. People can not expect their spouse to make them happy. We are each responsible for our own happiness. Anyone is certainly gambling with bad odds thinking a new spouse will be the key to happiness. The divorce rate goes up exponentially with each new attempt. Third marriages have a 73% divorce rate. This all said, sometimes the spouse is the source of the unhappiness and the only resolution is divorce, but if we examine boredom as a main ingredient for divorce many might be mistaking comfort and dependability for tediousness. Douglas fits the trustworthy, no frills profile which might be considered dull especially if you have an artistic temperament. I have a feeling that Connie is not self-stimulating when it comes to producing art and that she needs someone or something to awaken those urges in her. Douglas can be as supportive as he wants to be, but he will never be a muse. Connie is perfectly happy with their marriage and sees it as a success. Douglas also sees their marriage as a success and doesn’t understand why it can’t continue. Last chance Douglas...the Petersen grand tour of Europe. Douglas tries to move into their artistic circle, but is met with skepticism and derision. He googles like a madman trying to find interesting facts to share. ”Perhaps this is why those museum audio-guides had become so popular; a reassuring voice in your ear, telling you what to think and feel. Look to your left, take note, please observe; how terrific it would be to carry that voice with you always, out of the museum and throughout all of life.”When a family dispute has Albie running away from the grand tour Connie goes home, but Douglas decides that this may be the last chance he has to ever make things right with his son. David Nicholls follows up the phenomenally successful One Day with this amusing, but at times painfully real look at relationships between sons and fathers, between sons and mothers, and between wives and husbands. For those of you that have survived the teenage wars with your children, (I have recently graduated to survivor status.) depending on the part that you’ve had to play, you very well may find yourself wanting to strangle/hug one or two of the characters in this book. You will experience a whirlwind tour through the Netherlands, France, Italy, with the grand finale occurring in Spain. To say the least, Douglas comes home a changed man, and though he isn’t happy about the state of his marriage he is less fearful of the life that may exist after it. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.comI also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

A major error was pointed out by several GReaders for which I thank them and as a consequence I rewrote the review. I felt that my previous review did not do justice to the book. I was looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together. Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that? Now that is indeed a strong statement and how would you, as a spouse/partner, relate to that when your fifty-four year old husband, healthy, an academic and certainly not infirm makes that statement.I confess that I have never heard of this author at all. I was in Stansted Airport, London about ten days ago and I hate this airport with a passion. Why? It’s the security as it takes forever. So arriving three hours in advance after staying at the Radisson at the airport when they ripped me off with a Caesar salad and a glass of white wine, the waiter actually wanted a gratuity, I was not in the mood for any nonsense. People, people everywhere. Living in rural France for nearly fourteen years, the idea of all these individuals being so close to me, so many different languages drove me to despair. Keep away from me! I like my space and my privacy.So W. H. Smith to the rescue. Well to me it was like entering into a sweet shop. Normally I don’t find anything in there that I like but there was certainly choice on that particular day. I’m a book addict and there is no getting away from it. I only wanted one book and ended up with six. But “US” by David Nicholls caught my attention for several reasons. Firstly, it was the title, then the colour red on the cover, the fact that book was longlisted (why not shortlisted?) for the Man Booker Prize 2014, and I have a very good friend who is called Douglas but finally it was the blurb that clinched it for me!The novel is skillfully crafted and structured showing the current situation in relation to Connie’s and Douglas’ marriage and alternating with the twenty-first century version of the Grand Tour.With backdrops of England, France, Italy and Spain, the reader is taken through a kaleidoscopic narrative which is stunning. The descriptions of Paris and Florence with their art were also exceptional. Whenever I read a book and finally put it down, I always return to the part that leaves a lasting impression on me and this is when Douglas is in Barcelona and meets a smack of jellyfish (I had no idea what you call a group of jellyfish and this appears to be the appropriate definition – I guess they do “smack” in a way) whilst swimming in the sea. There are quite disastrous consequences here but gripping reading…The novel is witty, humorous, soul-searching with tear-jerking sections, in fact a tragicomedy. Certain passages were indeed quite sad but I ended up laughing for some obscure reason.Just imagine, you are a middle aged man who has always loved his wife from the day he met her but regrettably for him, he did become a trifle complacent as seen in the book but he was totally unaware of this at the time.Their son Albie (also known as the “Egg”). Now, you tell me. Why would you call your son Egg? That’s completely beyond me but then Egg plays a vital part in the breakdown of a marriage. Connie, to all intents a purposes does love her husband Douglas. I know that opposites supposedly attract but Connie being an arty type, who can indulge in light drugs is such an opposite to Douglas, a biochemist but then love works in wondrous ways as we all know and they marry, much to Douglas’ amazement.The problem is the wretched son, Albie, who is planning to go to university to study photography and what follows is a wife who finally states that with the departure of their son to university, she will also leave Douglas after the three of them return from their planned Grand Tour. No date is given but the strain of all of this makes Douglas determined to maintain his relationship with his wife. But will he succeed?This is the most amazing odyssey of a man who wants to retain the love of his son and wife. It is truly wonderful, multi-faceted and I loved it. As for the ending? I was in a way disappointed but then… Well it’s for you the reader to find out.The novel is witty, humorous, soul-searching with tear-jerking sections, in fact a tragicomedy. Certain passages were quite sad but I ended up laughing for some obscure reason.An absolutely wonderful book! Please read it! You will be, I’m convinced, as entranced as I was.

In hell, we’ll hear echoes of all the well-meaning criticism we gave our kids: every perfectly reasonable judgment on that T-shirt, that friend, that music, that mess, that earring, that homework!But our intentions were good, right?In David Nicholls’s new novel, “Us” — longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize — a father discovers just how much those intentions are worth to his hectored teenage son. This is the sort of witty book that guys should read the moment their partners say, “I’m pregnant!”Or maybe earlier.After 20 years of marriage, Douglas Petersen wakes up one night to hear his wife tell him, “Our marriage has run its course. . . . I want to leave you.”To Douglas’s surprise, his once attractive practicality has grown pinched and cold over the course of a long marriage. But in this irresistible novel, we see him from the conflicted inside: “I loved my wife to a degree that I found impossible to express, and so rarely did,” he tells us. “I am 54 years old . . . and have one son, Albie, nicknamed ‘Egg,’ to whom I am devoted but who sometimes regards me with a pure and concentrated disdain, filling me with so much sadness and regret that I can barely speak.”More often, though, the trouble is that Douglas does speak. There’s nothing about Albie that doesn’t frustrate him. Tell me you haven’t muttered this under your breath: “He refuses to wear a coat, an absurd affectation, as if coats were somehow ‘square’ or un-cool, as if there were something ‘hip’ about hypothermia. What is he rebelling against? Warmth? Comfort?” And then there’s the boy’s room, “an immense Petri dish of furry toast crusts and lager tins and unthinkable socks that will one day have to be sealed off in concrete like Chernobyl.” Douglas presents that most common tragedy of parenting: He would do anything for his child — except tolerate a little teenage attitude. “I disapproved because I cared,” he claims. “Why wasn’t that apparent?”Douglas tells us at the start, “This is a love story,” but it’s often a comedy and sometimes a tragedy. Trained as a scientist, Douglas knows everything about biology but little about life. Over the years, he’s failed to understand just how alienated from him his wife and son have become. Determined to improve, he does what any well-organized scientist would do: He draws up a list. No. 3 states, “It is not necessary to be seen to be right about everything, even when that is the case.” Ominously, No. 8 advises, “Maintain a sense of fun and spontaneity.”In fact, Nicholls’s entire novel comes to us as a long list of short, numbered sections — from one to 180. That super-organized structure, though, is no match for the messiness of family life. As any parent knows, there’s no list a teenager can’t scramble.Like Emma Straub’s “The Vacationers,” which came out earlier this year, “Us” is the story of a fractured family going on a trip: “the last summer holiday we’ll have together.” Despite her divorce plans, Douglas’s wife imagines a Grand Tour to prepare their college-bound son for “the adult world, like in the 18th century.” The young man, of course, would rather take the money and go off drinking with his buddies. To Douglas, who knows his marriage is over, this expensive expedition sounds like “a funeral cortege, backpacking through Italy.”Nicholls is a delightfully funny writer with a huge audience in England — his most recent novel, “One Day,” sold more than two million copies and was made into a film — and this over-planned vacation makes ripe material for comedy. If he were only a prig, Douglas would be an unbearable narrator, but he has a lovable, self-deprecating sense of humor, and he’s as frustrated as anyone else with his inability to relax, to accept, to let it go. “I reeked of disapproval,” he confesses. And to all the usual pressures that travel is heir to, Douglas adds his determination to turn the Grand Tour into the Grand Cure: a summer so packed with good cheer that his wife will fall back in love with him and his son will realize just what a swell dad he has.If you’ve ever left the house, you know that itinerary goes off the rails almost immediately. “I did my best,” Douglas says, “but my manner was queasy and self-conscious, like a children’s entertainer who knows his act is failing.” At their first stop in Paris, they check into a room “that was clearly the result of a wager to determine the smallest space into which a double mattress can fit. Brassy and vulgar, the bed frame must have been assembled inside like a ship in a bottle. On closer examination, it also seemed our room was a repository for all of Europe’s spare pubic hair.” The next room, which seemed perfectly lovely online, looks like a top-of-the-line bordello in a sex dungeon.Almost immediately, Douglas’s efforts to win over his 17-year-old son are thwarted by the arrival of a sexy accordionist from New Zealand who majored in ventriloquism. Albie is smitten by this obnoxious young woman — who wouldn’t be? On the worst nights, Douglas and his wife lie in bed trying to block out the sounds of “Purple Rain” while their son and his new girlfriend carry on next door.Yes, some of this has the madcap predictability of a rom-com available on DVD three weeks after its theatrical release. Douglas never tasted a hot chili sauce he won’t accidentally rub into his eye. Showing off his strong swimming at the beach, he’s surrounded by jellyfish (he imagines his corpse washing up on shore in an alarmingly tight bathing suit). But I found myself laughing — sometimes out loud on the Metro — through many of these antics. After a long season of novels focused on rape, torture and child abuse, “Us” felt like a welcome break.The real artistry of this book stems from its clever structure. Even as Douglas’s doomed little family trudges around Europe, the narrative constantly shifts back 25 years to the beginning of his relationship with the attractive young artist who became his wife. She and her bohemian friends are so cool, and he’s so square. “I danced,” he confesses, “like someone wrestling with a bout of diarrhoea, clenched and anxious.” He’s overwhelmed by their differences but determined to impress her, to change, to do whatever he must to attract her. Before her first visit, he frantically redecorates — new postcards, new throw rugs, new underwear: “If she ever set foot in my flat, she would mistake me for someone else entirely; a bachelor of quiet good taste and simple needs, self-contained and self-assured, a man of the world who owned van Gogh prints and cushions and smelt of trees.”The story of how that excited young man became the panicked middle-aged husband desperate to save his family is the real voyage of this novel. For all its bad meals, lumpy mattresses and cramped train seats, “Us” evolves into a poignant consideration of how a marriage ages, how parents mess up and what survives despite all those challenges.This review was first published in The Washington Post:http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...

There is something marvelously cathartic about Us. David Nicholls, graced by both Thalia and Melpomene, succeeds in making a tender salad out of raw satire. Humor, whether it’s on the page or the screen, is so hard to do well. When it works, really truly works, we’re wiping away tears of hilarity mingled with tears of sadness. Because what makes us laugh most deeply, what brings on that cathartic release, is comedy and tragedy sharing the stage. Douglas Petersen is in his early fifties and his wife, Connie, thinks she may want a divorce. She’s not entirely certain, but at any rate, they have a long-planned trip to Europe with their teenaged son to get through, so let’s take the summer and see how things go, shall we? Their son Albie, barely on speaking terms with his father for reasons anyone who has parented a teenager or who has ever been a teenager will understand (namely, that the loathed parent exists), balks at spending several weeks schlepping around the Continent with his parents. He agrees to go only out of adoration for his mother. They are, as Douglas explains, a “small family, somewhat meagre, and I think we each of us feel sometimes that it is a little too small, and each wish there was someone else there to absorb some of the blows.” Douglas determines that this Grand Tour of Europe is his chance to make his wife fall in love with him all over again and to close the rift with his son. It is the simplest of premises: how one man tries to save his small but splintered family. It doesn’t even sound all that interesting, really. Oh, but I couldn’t put this down. I didn’t want to put it down. And I laughed and cried all the way through. I confess I’d never heard of David Nicholls, despite his wildly popular novel One Day (2009) and being a huge fan of the movie Starter for 10, which I learned is a Nicholls’ novel and a screenplay he wrote. I plan to catch up if his other novels are as deeply satisfying as Us. The story is structured as a series of present moments punctuated by the past, recounted by Douglas, a methodical, staid, and unprepossessing scientist who once devoted his research to the genetic structure of the fruit fly. How he managed to enthrall and hang onto Connie, a blithe spirit, a moody, beautiful artiste, is revealed in self-conscious wonder and tenderness by her still-smitten husband. It would be easy to feel exasperation and pity for a man whose son regards him with such sullen disdain and whose wife trifles with their twenty-year marriage, but Douglas is never mawkish. Bewildered, yes, but his fumbling determination is endearing and empathetic. And, for heaven’s sake, the unraveling of the trip is just so very funny. Nicholls injects a series of slapstick events into the Petersen’s traipsing through Europe, but the comedy routine is always tinged with Douglas’ own sadness and anticipation: will he save his marriage or not?The adventure takes on a breathless singularity when Albie, in a fit of pique over an unintended insult by his father, abandons his parents in Amsterdam and disappears with a peripatetic busker from New Zealand. Connie decides the trip is over for her, too, and returns to England. At the eleventh hour, Douglas realizes this is his chance to be a hero to his wife: he decides to stay on in Europe, find his son and make things right. What ensues is a comedy of errors that lands him in jail, in the middle of a school of stinging jellyfish, and in the arms of a sympathetic Scandinavian divorcee. How it all comes together, or falls apart at the end, you really must discover for yourself. At its heart—and it’s such a very big heart, indeed—Us is the portrait of a marriage, one that will be very familiar to those of us who’ve spent at least half our lives as part of an Us, and perhaps a cautionary tale for those who have not. It is all the taking for granted, the piling up of misdemeanors large and small, the loss of joy in the drudgery of day to day rolled up into a one-sided love story and the coming-of-age of a husband and father. Poignant and hilarious, Us is also hopeful, awkward, darling, and full of joy.

5★Touching, funny, sad and extremely frustrating. I kept thinking “NO, Douglas! Don’t SAY that! Just stop! ARGH$#!”But that’s the point. Connie loves Douglas in spite of his obsessive nagging and worrying, which is nothing like that of her arty-party London friends. She’s pretty and popular, he’s nerdy and not. Miss Extrovert, meet Mr Asperger. But he’s smart and can make a battery out of a lemon! He tells us compared to his A4 sheet of past relationships, she has a three-drawer filing cabinet. Douglas tells their story in pieces, following their Grand Tour of Europe while reminiscing about the last 25 years. It’s a tale of love and friendship, and how they learned to accommodate each other as the bumped along through successes and over tragedies.“Connie was, in those days, ferociously untidy. . .it was not unusual for her to reach into the pocket of a capacious coat for keys and to pull out a small wrench, a stolen ashtray, a desiccated apple-core or the stone of a mango. . .But, for the most part, I didn’t mind. Light travels differently in a room that contains another person; it reflects and refracts so that even when she was silent or sleeping I knew that she was there.”Now Douglas is intent on ensuring 17-year-old son Albie is prepared for every worst-case scenario in an uncertain future world by bullying him over homework day in and day out and belittling his choice of photography over science (sure, that’ll help). Meanwhile, Albie would rather wing it, like Mum.Connie tells Douglas she might want to split up soon, but first, she wants the three of them to do the Grand Tour. Douglas, grasping for this lifeline (maybe he can win her back!), goes overboard, printing up detailed itineraries with everything scheduled, pre-booked, and pre-paid, with stops at all the major art museums for his arty family. On the trip, feeling his father is ashamed of him, Albie finally rebels and takes off with a wild accordion player for countries unknown.Connie returns to England, while Douglas feels compelled to repair the damage and track his son down and fetch him home to his mother.There’s a wealth of love and tenderness between them, and Connie has always seemed to understand the words that Douglas hasn’t been able to bring himself to say, although Douglas is now starting to doubt it. “…my wife at fifty-two years old seems to me as attractive as the day I first met her. If I were to say this out loud, she would say, ‘Douglas, that’s just a line. No one prefers wrinkles, no one prefers grey.’ To which I’d reply, ‘But none of this is a surprise. I’ve been expecting to watch you grow older ever since we met. Why should it trouble me? It’s the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It’s THAT face.’Perhaps she would have liked to hear this but I had never got around to saying it out loud. I had always presumed there would be time and now, sitting on the edge of the bed at four a.m., no longer listening out for burglars, it seemed that it might be too late.”It’s interesting to watch Douglas and Albie grow up on their big tour, and I can see why this was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. I’ll be thinking about these people for a long time.

O Casamento e as Vicissitudes da Identidade ReprimidaDoug é a água fria derramada sobre a fervura de Connie!Racional, organizado, previsível ... Doug contrasta com uma Connie inconstante, emocional e criativa.As diferenças de ambos são peças dum puzzle que encaixam na perfeição, formando um quadro de equilibrada completude.Porém, toda a bela tem senão, e no caso concreto do relacionamento deste par, esta dá pelo nome de Rotina. A dita rotina sufoca a veia artística de Connie, que ao fim de quase um quarto de século de casamento, foi assaltada por um desejo indómito de voar a solo.Afinal, quem era ela fora daquele Nós intemporal?Era uma questão que urgia responder antes que o peso dos anos lhe cortasse as asas ainda por estrear!E foi assim, que num impulso de coragem e determinação, Connie interrompe uma noite de sono de Doug, para a grande revelação!Porém, Doug permanece de coração amarrado à sua bela Connie, e está determinado a lutar pela continuidade da sua relação.Boa sorte, Doug!...Moral da história:Se num relacionamento, um dos envolvidos se vê constrangido a abdicar duma relevante parte de si, o final está latente e eminente!Mais tempo... menos tempo... a fragilidade do Nós está lá, ameaçando quebrá-lo a qualquer instante...Porém, no terreno assaz movediço duma relação, nada é inflexível nem imutável, e o veto do amor intervém, consertando ou libertando:Ou Vai, ou Racha!... ;)

I loved ONE DAY and this book is equally good. Poignant. Funny. Moving. Surprising. David Nicholls creates fantastic characters, who are flawed and infuriating, but very easy to care about.

Us is a novel about a marriage in crisis. It’s well-paced, humorous and contains many great insights about marital life. Connie, who works in an art gallery, tells her husband, Douglas, a biochemist, she wants to leave him. This happens just before they are about to embark on a grand tour of Europe together. Douglas persuades Connie that they need not cancel their holiday. The narrative alternates between past and present. Nichols is particularly good at dialogue and finding the humour in typical modern day situations. An essentially light and thoroughly enjoyable read.

Marriage and the Common Case of Unexpressed IdentityThe nerd type of guy can easily fall for a glamorous artistic moody beautiful woman!It's an obviously expected event, cos we can see it as a simple case of physics applied to human relations.A very simple case indeed -- the one that joins protons and electrons to balance the unbalancedThat's what happenned in the Us of Connie and Doug -- individually they were unbalanced, but together they conquered some stability.However, for the moody kind, routine can be a dangerous damaging factor. After a quarter of a century of Us, Connie was more in the mood for a "me myself and I" kind of journey. After all, who was she, outside of what seemed an almost infinite Us?... She didn't know it, did she?! Would she die without knowing it?!...So... in the middle of the night, she woke up a sleepy, startling Doug, for the big revelation.And then it was arranged that after a long tour around Europe with their beloved son, their marriage would be officially over!But Doug belonged to the steady kind and was still much in love and willing to fight for his Connie like an honourable knight! And... that long journey around Europe seemed the perfect chance to conquer his precious lady back...Such a noble project would certainly provide the required happy ending! Nice and easy for the rational mind of Douglas, but ... And now, for the sake of your eventual reading pleasure, I'll have to stop right here!The guessing game is about to begin!...All in all, this is a book about a marital crisis caused by individuality versus marriage.In the end, I felt quite happy for being single!... 😉😜

Douglas has planned a trip around Europe as a perfect remedy for his failing marragie to Connie.The Grand Tour is devised after Connie wants to leave him seeing as their son Albie also also set to depart the family home for college.Surly this failsafe plan of bring the three together will succeed...The trip seems to be going quite well on their first stop in Paris, though teenager Albie would quite like to do his own thing in the French capital.It's the train journey to Amsterdam where the first cracks between Doug and Albie start to appear. Once they've arrived in Holland and the itinerary is no longer being adhered to then the whole trip looks in tatters.The travel aspect really enticed me into the story as was curious to see which city was next on the agenda.The three main characters are all well defined and clear with which type of trip they'd all like.Whilst I felt Douglas was trying his best for the whole group to have a good time, his regimental plans took all the fun out of these beautiful locations.I love visiting art galleries too, I've enjoyed both the Louvre and Van Gouh's museums too but you need to mix it up with other landmarks and attractions to get the best of the local culture.The organised Doug and whimsical Connie hardly seemed like the most compatible couple.It would have been more interesting if everyone had equal input to the travel plans.I really liked Douglas first person narrative though madding with some of the ways he acted on the trip.I'd liked to think that he learnt a lot especially during the second half of the journey...