Well this should be interesting. I dug deep in trying to save money on air-fare, and so for the 2nd leg of the journey, I'll be leavinf Los Angeles on the 24th and arriving in Auckland on the 26th. My 25th of December, AKA Christmas, I'll be on a 36 hour layover on the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. I've never even heard of Rarotonga, much less thinking I'd be Christmasing there one day.

"Goin' Home" is a song by rock band The Rolling Stones featured on their 1966 album Aftermath.



Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Goin' Home" is a long blues-inspired track that is notable as one of the first songs by a rock and roll band to break the ten-minute mark and the longest recorded song on any Stones album.[1] While many bands had experimented with length in live performances, and Bob Dylan had written many songs by this point which reached the five/six-minute mark, "Goin' Home" was the first "jam" recorded expressly for an album. In an interview with the magazine Rolling Stone, Richards said:



It was the first long rock and roll cut. It broke that two-minute barrier. We tried to make singles as long as we could do then because we just liked to let things roll on. Dylan was used to building a song for 20 minutes because of the folk thing he came from.



That was another thing. No one sat down to make an 11-minute track. I mean 'Goin' Home', the song was written just the first 2 and a half minutes. We just happened to keep the tape rolling, me on guitar, Brian [Jones] on harp, Bill [Wyman, on bass] and Charlie [Watts, on drums] and Mick. If there's a piano, it's Stew [Ian Stewart]

Remember it well, even the girl i was with at the time.

Rarotonga!! Beached as bro. Make sure you wear your jandals to the chilly bin bro.

In my case, with my father, I lived several thousand miles from him. Each year I said "I will go visit him this year" But was busy with work, my own family, ... life in general.
Until the 0300 call came in - rushed down to see him. He died while I was on the airplane.
Good idea to not let this happen if you can. I still think of it, over 30 years later.

Swat a fly and feel remorse.
Or the mosquito sucking your blood and poisoning you.
Swap, bye, bye.

It's an odd thing this death and remorse business, life is for the living, the dead feel nothing hence we grieve for whom, ourselves of course, not for the departed. I decided years and years ago that I won't go to funerals other maybe, perhaps, possibly, to support somebody very near and dear, my UK family were all told not to expect me and so it has been. The nearby generals mum died last year and I was told by Mrs CM that I had to attend, I went out of curiosity and because I like the general. An ex-PM's wife showed up in her Bentley FFS and was seen. At the end of a reasonably dignified affair a toy clown carrying a sparkler was pulled down a wire/zip line to ignite the bottles of petrol the stewards had thrown over the body, how undignified was that.....then Mrs. Bentley's chauffeur (cute as a button in uniform with gun and radio at hip) drove off, presumably headed for some retail therapy. I think when my time comes I might find a nice beach and feed myself to the fishies, just to avoid all of that.