Timbuktu

Yesterday, I made a rather large discovery. This was not a ground breakingly amazing new discovery. No. This was, to most people, common knowledge. I was, clearly, not one of those people.

Firstly, I think I need to give you an idea of some other mistakes I've made in the past. You will probably notice the pattern in that they are all geography related faux pas. Well, there was that time when I thought that Denmark and Portugal were seaside towns on England's coast, between Cornwall and Devon. And that time when I thought that Islam was a country and that the religion had originated from there and, therefore, been named after it. Or that day when I found out that Egypt is, in fact, not its own country, but a part of Africa instead. Yeah, I think you're getting the gist.

So in Britain (I'm not sure about other countries) when we want to say a place that is very far away, as far away as possible (other than Australia) people often use Timbuktu as an example. So if someone asked me where my friend was, and I was feeling sarcastic, I might reply with "Timbuktu" (and a cursory roll of the eyes.)

Bearing this in mind, I think you'll agree that this use of the place is relatively misleading. I, however, was very mislead indeed. I was under the impression that Timbuktu was a made up place, another word for the edge of the world or something similar. I'd imagined it as the very last stop at a train station, completely empty of people and just full of lost things (I think I may have been influenced by the Room of Requirement slightly on this one.)

However, I was watching Charmed (a TV series about witches and girl power for those of you who, sadly, don't know (I recommend it, it's awesome) when they accidentally banished a demon to Timbuktu. One of the characters then proceeded to go and get him and bring him back. The fact that the character was able to do this made me question my previous ideas of the place and I soon found out that Timbuktu is a real place.

An actual real place in Africa* where people live and work and play. And I didn't think it existed. I thought this place was imaginary. In my defence if you type 'is Timbuktu' into Google the suggestions are 'a real place', 'a place' and 'real.' I am clearly not the first to be mistaken by its undeniable reality. Still. That's not good.

In conclusion I am useless at geography and should never be left to go anywhere alone. I'd only get lost.

On a completely unrelated topic, you may have noticed that on my blog I managed to add a 'reply' button, so I can reply to your comments. The thing is, I don't know if you actually get notified when I reply, so even though I've replied to lots of your comments, you might not have realised. So I just thought I'd bring that to your attention. Awesome. Hope you had a good day and I'll see you soon =)

*It is now on my list of places I want to visit, along with Canada, Italy and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.