Monday, May 11, 2026

All My Trials

All you bardolators out there already know that Will loved a pun on travail (a trouble) and travel (as in a journey.) The words would have had the same pronunciation back around 1600, I'm told, and I'm sure the lousily muddy roads between Stratford and the capital played some part in the conjoining of the terms in the great dramatist's (and sonneteer's) mind (there's a lot of this particular pun in the poems, I seem to recall.)

But this is just to say that had he been alive today and experienced the journey, as we did yesterday, from Alor Gajah, down the North-South highway, through the border crossing at Woodlands to this Far Place, he would have thought the same way. It was a travail and a half, I can tell you. And that's all I will say. For now. 

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